Ireland.ie

— Published June 16th, 2003  |  by David Moore

An April 2003 My AvantGo survey reported that 52% of those surveyed purchased more than half of their travel needs online, with 29% making all their travel arrangements on the Web. How well does Ireland's official tourist site meet online travellers' needs?

Firstly, which site should you go to? Amidst a flurry of new windows, this reviewer was dragged from ireland.ie through tourismireland.com, shamrock.org, ireland.travel.ie to irelandofthewelcomes.com.

When the browser settled on [http://www.ireland.travel.ie] it was possible to start looking around. The main strength of site is its accommodation listings, but again there are problems with fragmentation.

You can browse listings in one place, narrowing the results down to small villages and then to individual hotels or B&Bs. But to make reservations, you have to go into a different part of the site, and start again, entering the dates you require and a very broad geographical area.

So you've found the perfect hotel, but there's no simple way to make a reservation there.

There is a large amount of information on what to do, but much of it is generic and out of date (in Irish Tourism land, Wayne McCullough and Stephen Collins are still world boxing champions). Obvious ways to keep the content fresh, such as featured locations or articles on particular visits are shunted off to the Ireland of the Welcomes magazine site, rather than integrated into the main body of the material.

There is lots of data, but little context or advice to make sense of it, a situation made worse by the lack of a content search. It's as if the site was built and the databases and mapping features left to look after themselves. It lacks the human element, so crucial in the hospitality industry.

For a site that is meant to be the online representation of tourism in Ireland, you don't feel very welcomed.

The score

Criteria	(Full marks)	Score
Content	(90)	46
Functionality	(40)	7
Site Design	(30)	14
Total	(160)	67

Related Links:

• Ireland.ie - [http://www.ireland.travel.ie]