Wednesday, 4 March 2015

Trustworthy and untrustworthy websites about travelling

The goal of our fifth assignment was to find a trustworthy and an untrustworthy website that relates to travelling. The Internet is full of credible and very interesting websites about travelling but we chose site lastminute.com. It offers a lot of information about deals on hotels, city breaks, spas, restaurants, theatre and getaways. The company that operates that page is leading travel retailer in UK and the site gets more than 1.65 million visitors a week [1]. Moreover, the website was voted as one of the UK's Superbrands for 2015. Considering that, this is the site which offers services and advertise product, the persuasive means used in the website is Pathos: “It's never too early to start thinking about the perfect gift. Treat mum to a luxury spa day, an afternoon tea at a 5* London hotel, or a night out at a popular West End theatre show.“ or “Footie mad? Manchester’s newest hotel might be the perfect place for your next getaway.“


Arguments for the trustworthy website lastminute.com
  •          Website has a professional appearance
  •          We can find information easily and fast
  •          High quality pictures
  •          Text is grammatically correct
  •          Website gives us enough information
  •          Information about website are easily to find
  •          Organization behind website is a big company



The second part finding the untrustworthy website was more complicated task. However, it is very hard to find this kind of website now days. After long time searching the Internet we finally find the website - euromost.info. This website provides 38 European city guides, 30 European country profiles, travel guides with business and tourist information for central eastern, northern southern and western Europe, the Baltic states, Scandinavia and Russia. The site offers information mostly about cities and countries. The website uses Logos as the persuasive means: "The earliest known documentation of this city is 1147 AD. Since then it has been an integral part of Russian society.”

Arguments for the untrustworthy website euromost.info

  • Website doesn't have a professional apperance
    • There is no search provided to search for specific information
    • Website is badly designed
  • Low quality pictures
  • The website is not easy to use (site is no transparent)
  • The site fails to meet with customers' requirements -> we can't trust the website
  • There is only weak contact information mentioned on the website
  • The link "sitemap" doesn't work correctly



[1] The Independent. The Independent [online]. August 2013 [cit. 2015-03-03]. Retrieved from:  http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/travel/the-10-best-lastminute-travel-websites-8786559.html

- M.M

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