TOURISM WEBSITES CHARACTERISTICS IN A COUNTRY WITH SMALL INTERNET USE – CASE STUDY OF SERBIA

Web is the powerful tool for tourism industry in economically developed countries. That mostly implies high website quality, use of Internet promotion techniques and good management of website distribution elements. However, what kinds of tourism websites characteristics are present in a country with small development and small use of Internet, such as Serbia? Serbia connected to Internet in 1996, and two years later first websites related to tourism subjects appeared, but still has small Internet penetration rate. Many companies in travel industry from developing countries use websites, but not in the right way. The purpose of this paper is to examine and show present tourism websites characteristics in term of its credibility, presentation and type of website content, visibility and search engine rank. The main method used in this research is structural observation of domestic 260 travel websites in Serbia. The results have pointed to the negative websites characteristics and inadequate use of its possibilities in tourism sector in Serbia.