Exploring User Behavior in Destination Websites: An Application of Web Mining Techniques

The development of the internet has so strongly affected the way a tourist destination can be promoted that portals now play an important role in defining the marketing strategies of tourist destinations. Hence, investigating website surfing behavior has become crucial to understanding the needs of potential tourists. Using Web Mining techniques, our study explores the information-seeking behavior of those who log on to a website promoting the island of Sicily, a well known tourist destination in the South of Italy. The study explores whether a tourist's country of origin affects their information needs and surfing behavior. Actually, our results do show differences in behavior between users of the site from Western countries and those from China.