Not All European Tourist Boards Are Ready For Summer Rush
By Gayane Dallakyan
Tourists do lots of research on the web before travel and National Boards websites are number one web destinations. How well National Tourism Boards’ websites are prepared to handle the pick of vacation season? Mon.itor.US made a research to check speed and availability of European country official websites out of several locations in the US and Europe.

National Boards’ websites had become very significant and critical gateways; they make the first impression sharing information across geographical, linguistic and technological boundaries, creating the electronic market place. A good performing website entices potential tourists to use their services and come to their country.

MonitorUS has been monitoring European National Board sites during 1-12 June 2007 and they showed the following uptime results. Germany www.germany-tourism.de, Greece, www.gnto.gr, Ireland www.irishtourism.com, Italy www.italiantourism.com, Netherlands www.holland.com, Norway

www.visitnorway.com, Spain www.spain.info, Sweden www.visitsweden.com, Switzerland www.myswitzerland.com websites were 100%.

Finland www.visitfinland.com was 91.5% which means the site was down more than a day during the mentioned period, and while we might think, 98% (Denmark www.visitdenmark.com) is good, but it actually means being down approximately 6 hours during 12 days! How many customers were lost during that time? High uptime is not only possible it is absolutely necessary to be effective. Finland www.visitfinland.com and Denmark www.visitdenmark.com official tourism sites seems had serious issues during first twelve days in June.

Mon.itor.Us also measures website load speed which is an important metric in delivering quality web experience. Web customers aren’t going to stand in the “queue” to reach you. Slow loading means longer time waiting in the line. Several sites demonstrated poor speed which is almost equal to being down; the worst were Greece and UK websites.
On-going monitoring and measurement of website uptime and load speed is a best practice, if businesses want to be competitive. More information about it is available in http://blog.mon.itor.us/?p=323

Contact: Gayane DallakyanSales and MarketingEmail: gdallakyan@monitis.com Web: mon.itor.usWeb: monitis.com