Nadzeya Kalbaska, Angelina Jovic & Lorenzo Cantoni

Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland

USABILITY EVALUATION TO AN eLEARNING COURSE PRESENTING A REGIONAL DESTINATION. THE CASE OF “TICINO SWITZERLAND TRAVEL SPECIALIST”.

In recent years Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) have started to offer eLearning courses, which train travel agents and tour operators to promote better tourism destinations. eLearning courses increase marketing activities of a DMO also they meet the needs of travel agents, who are in search of new unique selling points in the threatening context of eTourism disintermediation. Nevertheless, the user-friendly appearance of these eLearning courses and their easiness of use are still a challenge within the tourism industry. This paper introduces such a course, offered by a Swiss regional DMO, and presents its evaluation through a usability testing. Based on such a procedure, found usability issues were marked, implemented, then course has been released in beta version.

Keywords:  eTourism; eLearning; usability evaluation; instructional design.

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