The Way of Saint James and the Xacobeo 2010 in the tourism websites of the Spanish autonomous communities

This article analyses the tourism websites of Spanish autonomous communities crossed by the Way of Saint James. Considering that the Way of Saint James and the Xacobeo 2010 are important touristic opportunities for these autonomous regions, the main objective of this investigation is to evaluate the information about these touristic places in their tourism websites. The analysis focused on two aspects: firstly, establishing whether the autonomous communities have used the Way of Saint James and the Xacobeo 2010 to promote themselves, and secondly, evaluating the quality of the websites. The study included a literature review, definition of concepts and criteria to measure the quality of websites, and the analysis of the content and design of the selected tourism websites. The results show that the Galician website is the most complete in terms of information about the Way of Saint James and the Xacobeo 2010. The information about the Way of Saint James and the Xacobeo 2010 in the websites of the other communities is vague and differs from one website to another. Due to the touristic significance of the Xacobeo 2010 and the importance of Internet as a medium of communication, the research group plans to conduct a new analysis of the communities’ institutional websites in 2011.