Tour America Direct Evaluate Website Website Review:

Tour America Direct Evaluate website Website review: Tour America Direct (http://www.touramericadirect.co.uk/) "The push towards networked information and communication technologies (ICT), combined with increased customer expectations, has put extraordinary pressure on the information-centric and service-based tourism industry to extend conventional distribution channels to include the Internet as a major new marketing channel" (Braun & Hollick 2006). Tour America Direct makes use of the Internet to advertise travel deals and packages to the United Kingdom consumer who wishes to travel to America.

However, while finding deals on travel is likely to be an attractive proposition in these budget-oriented times, the website design is not conducive to encouraging surfers to purchase from its offerings. When a website surfer enters the site, the user first encounters a popup asking him or her to talk to the website's live operators. While this might be an advantage for some users, the fact that it occurs so quickly makes the website seem suspicious, and does not allow the user to review the content before seeking assistance.

Unlike some competitor tourism websites, Tour America Direct does not offer any attractive photographs of its American destinations. The website is almost entirely populated by verbiage, mostly relating to the deals on flights it is offering. While customers surfing the website may indeed be deal-hungry, the plethora of numbers he or she is confronted with makes it difficult for the user to focus. There are several links the user can click to learn about flights, destinations, car hires, hotels, and other areas of interest to travelers.

Some of these tabs, such as villas to rent and escorted tours, would seem to be of little value to someone who is looking primarily for bargain flights. The first words across the heading of the website proclaim that it offers 'Cheap U.S. Flights." 'Cheap' is a word with questionable connotations. While it is true that many users may not want to pay 'top dollar' for traveling, the bare-bones nature of the website combined with such language do not create a professional image.

The website does offer the advantage of easily-searched flights and hotel occupancies, into which the user can type his or her local airport and destination or the desired city and length of stay. The heading of the website advertises the company has been in business for seventeen years, which does convey a certain amount of legitimacy in terms of its positioning, regardless of the questionable visual design. Unfortunately, the stock photo of a woman available for 'live chat' undercuts this claim of being well-established and professional.

Rather than using interesting graphics regarding travel, the website instead is peppered with images of the managing director, which is likely to be of little interest for someone seeking to plan a vacation. There is also a great deal of advertising on the website for travel.

While this is understandable in terms of the company's need to garner revenue on one hand, the invasive nature of the large and animated ads suggests that the company does not necessarily have the traveler's best interests at heart, and is primarily a money-making operation. In terms of relevant legal information, the website provides a link for travelers to an ESTA form that it says is required for users to complete before traveling to the United States.

The link to the 'terms and conditions' is in a pdf file with extensive fine print which also does not contribute to the website's credibility. Also, for all of its aggressive promotion, the.