A Website Evaluation of Travel Agencies in Iran: An Adoption Level and Value Creation Approach

摘要

Nowadays e-commerce is playing a big role in the tourism industry. It is safe to say that tourism industry isone of the only industries that accepted e-commerce with open arms. Travel agencies are one of the firstorganizations to move toward joining the online environment. Information technology has changed thisindustry in a way that travellers can now plan, reserve and purchase their ideal trips in a fraction of timeand money used by traditional methods. This research focuses on investigating travel agencies websites inIran to see where they are standing today according to the stages of internet adoption. In addition thispaper aimed to evaluate the performance of the travel agencies in the online environment. The mainweaknesses were extracted to help managers enhance their e-commerce activities in Iran's tourism. Thevalue creation and capturing concepts were introduced, and it was concluded that perhaps the most seriousdisadvantage of the travel agencies websitesin Iran, is that they did create value but they did not facilitatevalue capturing