Tour America Direct Website Review: Design and Marketing
This paper provides a critical evaluation of the Tour America Direct website, a UK-based online travel service offering flights and packages to the United States. The review assesses the site's visual design, usability, legal transparency, and marketing strategy against established principles of online tourism communication. The paper identifies several weaknesses — including an intrusive live-chat popup, an absence of destination imagery, cluttered pricing information, and ineffective market segmentation — while acknowledging minor strengths such as a searchable flight tool and a stated seventeen-year trading history. The analysis draws on academic literature to argue that competing on price alone is insufficient in a crowded digital travel marketplace.
- Introduction: ICT pressures on tourism websites and context
- First Impressions and Visual Design: Popup chat, lack of imagery, text overload
- Navigation and Content: Links, tabs, and 'cheap flights' branding issues
- Credibility and Professionalism: Search tools, longevity claims, and intrusive ads
- Legal Information and Market Segmentation: ESTA link, fine-print terms, weak audience targeting
- Conclusion: Price-only strategy insufficient in digital travel market
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What makes this paper effective
- The review is grounded in academic sources, using Braun & Hollick (2006) and Piccoli (2001) to frame website critique within established tourism marketing theory rather than relying solely on personal opinion.
- It balances criticism with acknowledgement of genuine strengths — such as the searchable flight tool and the company's stated longevity — giving the evaluation analytical credibility.
- Specific website elements (popup chat, stock photos, animated ads, PDF terms) are cited as concrete evidence for each evaluative claim, making the argument traceable and verifiable.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied source integration: rather than simply summarising academic articles, it deploys them as evaluative lenses. For example, Piccoli's (2001) point about the web's ability to deliver targeted information to specific user groups is used directly to expose the site's failure to segment its audience — turning a theoretical claim into a practical critique.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a theoretical framing of online tourism before moving through a systematic walkthrough of the website, progressing from first-contact impressions to navigation, credibility signals, legal content, and marketing strategy. Each section builds the overall argument that price-only competition, combined with poor design choices, undermines the site's commercial effectiveness. The conclusion synthesises these points without introducing new material.
Introduction
"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 United Kingdom consumers who wish to travel to America. However, while finding deals on travel is likely to be an attractive proposition in these budget-conscious times, the website's design is not conducive to encouraging visitors to purchase from its offerings.
First Impressions and Visual Design
When a visitor enters the site, the first thing they encounter is a popup asking them to speak with the website's live operators. While this might be advantageous for some users, the fact that it appears so quickly makes the website seem suspicious, and does not allow the user to review the content before seeking assistance. Unlike many competitor tourism websites, Tour America Direct does not offer any attractive photographs of its American destinations. The website is almost entirely populated by text, mostly relating to the flight deals it is promoting. While customers visiting the website may indeed be deal-hungry, the sheer volume of numbers they are confronted with makes it difficult to focus.
Navigation and Content
There are several links the user can click to learn about flights, destinations, car hire, hotels, and other areas of interest to travellers. Some of these tabs — such as villas to rent and escorted tours — would seem to be of little value to someone looking primarily for bargain flights. The first words across the heading of the website proclaim that it offers "Cheap U.S. Flights." The word "cheap" carries questionable connotations. While many users may not want to pay a premium for travel, the bare-bones nature of the website combined with such language does not create a professional image. As website usability research consistently shows, first impressions are formed quickly and are difficult to reverse.
Conclusion
Competing on price alone is seldom an effective strategy, given that consumers can so easily keep an eye out for deals on a variety of internet travel portals. Tour America Direct's overreliance on price-based messaging, combined with its cluttered design, lack of destination imagery, and weak audience targeting, significantly undermines its potential as a professional and trustworthy online travel service.
References
Braun, P., & Hollick, M. (2006). Tourism skills delivery: Sharing tourism knowledge online. Education & Training, 48(8), 693–703.
Piccoli, G. (2001). Web-site marketing for the tourism industry: Another view. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 42(6), 63–65. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/209702885?accountid=10901
Tour America Direct (2012). Official website. Retrieved from
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