South Africa's tourism industry and 2010 aspirations are being seriously hampered by the quality of tourism-orientated Internet sites.
That is according to a study released by researcher Ian Kruger, who said the private sector's accommodation and transport market could be hard hit if businesses don't pull up their Internet socks.
Simply speaking, the study of 100 tourism-related sites showed that there was a general trend of "underperformance" and that many were nothing more than digital replicas of company pamphlets.
The functionality of the large majority was also minimal, with potential tourists being unable to book accommodation or services online.
"Should the local market not begin to provide suitable websites, a great deal of business could be lost," Kruger said.
"Online inefficiencies will hinder the growth needed to elevate our tourism industry to a similar status to that of our international counterparts."
The research was sponsored by South African Tourism, First National Bank, the Tourism Enterprise Programme and Quirk eMarketing.
Fiona Buchner, head of eBusiness for SA Tourism, said the research was crucial to assist the industry identify its current usage of online marketing, its effectiveness and how to further market South Africa ahead of 2010.
Among the key problems identified in the study were a lack of links to connect with other related Internet domains and difficulty in finding critical information on pricing of services.
"The greater the number of steps it takes for the user to find out what he is going to be charged, the greater the risk he will click away from the website and not come back.
"Essentially, most sites function as virtual versions of their brochures," Kruger said.
"The online environment is the most important marketing tool for tourism firms. As an industry, we need to focus on it immediately, so we can catch up with levels seen internationally."
