Assessing digital marketing communication quality among tourist information offices: Evidence from Poland

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of assessing the quality of digital marketing communication of destinations conducted by 326 certified Tourist Information Offices (TIO) in Poland. The objective of the study was to conduct a multidimensional analysis of the relationship between website quality and social media activity, and the level of digital marketing communication, using secondary analysis and customized indicators: the Digital Maturity Score (DMS), the Social Media Activity (SMA), the Attractiveness of Digital Communication Channels (ADC), and the Integrated Digital Presence Indicator (IDP). These indicators have been identified as key factors in enabling a final typology of TIOs based on the Level of Digital Maturity of Websites (LW) and the Level of Activity in social media (LS) in the destination marketing communication process. The formal TIO certification category (C-TIO) exerts an influence on all indicators of digital marketing communication. The significance of these relationships only attained the recommended minimum effect size (RMPE) in the case of SMA and IDP (ϱ=0.23, p<0.001). For DMS (ϱ=0.15, p=0.005) and ADC (ϱ=0.12, p=0.037), these relationships were extremely weak and below the RMPE threshold (RMPE <0.20). The article makes a significant contribution to research on the digital transformation of tourist information organizations and destination e-marketing by proposing indicators and highlighting practical implications. The proposed indicators allow for the identification of the effectiveness and efficiency of internet marketing practiced by TIO and can be used to evaluate the integrated communication process of other institutions managing tourist destinations.