Multicriteria Evaluation of the Websites of Alternative Tourism Enterprises: Case Study in the Region of Crete

Alternative tourism has gained considerable interest among consumers and enterprises in the tourism sector, creating new opportunities for providing high quality and innovative tourist services, while contributing to sustainable development. The Internet plays a key role as a tool for promoting alternative tourism. Motivated by this, this article presents an original research on the evaluation of the content features of the websites of enterprises involved with alternative tourism services in the region of Chania, Greece. The sample consists of 28 websites evaluated over 11 performance criteria through the ELECTRE III multicriteria method. The websites are ranked in a benchmarking context and the results of the evaluation are used to identify the most successful practices, as well as the website features that require improvements for the enterprises to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in the new era of technological innovation in the tourism sector.