Usability Audit Technology of Travel Agency Website

In the context of growing competition in the market of tourist services, it becomes necessary to introduce digital technologies: booking tours with the help of on-line service, which saves time, speeds up the processing of the application and confirmation of the selected tour. The introduction of information technologies in the system of booking and reservation of hotels, air tickets requires the development of high-quality design and convenient search for consumers on the websites of travel companies. In the modern conditions of globalization of the tourist market, quality management of website service has become a major factor in improving the competitiveness of tourism businesses. An important aspect of the activity of a tourist enterprise is the formation of tools for evaluating its own tourist site in comparison with the websites of enterprises-leaders of the tourism market. Due to the limited financial, labor and time resources objectively arises a problem of ranking directions, methods and specific measures to improve the service quality offered by travel agencies on their web pages. To further identify ways to improve the quality and profitability of the travel agency's website, the authors proposed to use modern methods of website usability audit, that is, the evaluation of the ease of use of the site by the end user. The authors conducted an audit of the websites of travel agencies basing on the methods of taxonomic analysis. They defined the main indicators of assessing the level of quality service provided to visitors of the site, which significantly affect the e-commerce system of travel agencies and the total profit from on-line sales of travel services. The method proposed by the authors can serve as a basis for further improvement of audit technologies of websites of travel agencies and e-commerce operations.