Promocja z wykorzystaniem internetowych portali agroturystycznych

Abstract

In recent years, agritourism has become one of the most popular form of tourism. Its promotion is not easy, so most of the agritourism farms are not able to promote their services on their own. Special skills and financial resources are required. Usage of the Internet seems to be the right solution to this problem. By using it, owners of agritourism farms can benefit from specialized agritourism web portals, where for a small fee, each of them can post information about their services. The author has decided to look closer at this form of agritourism promotion. The main topic of his research was the promotion in the Internet using agritourism web portals. Research focused on the web portals, which promote agritourism in the region of Lodz. Special emphasis was placed on the websites of public organizations, which are promoting agritourism in the region, including agricultural advisory centres, agritourism associations, Regional Tourism Organization, local tourism organizations, communities, districts, and local action groups. To obtain a more complete picture of research, these portals were analysed from three perspectives: content analysis conducted by the author of the study, opinions of the owners of agritourism farms from the region of Lodz, and opinions of private individuals, who search for agritourism offers via the Internet. The research has showed that there are a lot of non-integrated web portals, containing agritourism offers from the region of Lodz. These portals differ in their functionality and quality of published agritourism offers. There is lack of one, complex web portal dedicated to the region of Lodz. Such a situation, causes the confusion of the Internet users and difficulties in finding the relevant information. Furthermore, the author noticed a number of failures related to promotion of agritourism farms on the existing web portals. At the same time, he wants to emphasize that in his opinion, agritourism web portals have a much higher potential for promotion of tourism in the region of Lodz, than is currently used. Therefore, the author decided to present a series of recommendations which could significantly improve the quality of mentioned portals and help in developing a new complex agritourism web portal for the region, which in turn would result in attracting new visitors, and promotion of the whole region of Lodz. Moreover, on the basis of the research results and presented recommendations, the author has created the model of agritourism web portal. The model takes the best practices from the web portals analysed during the research. In the future, this model could be used to build a professional, complex agritourism web portal for the region of Lodz.