Exploring rural tourism and sustainability in Southeast Asia through the lenses of official tourism websites A benchmarking exercise

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to report the findings of a benchmarking exercise among official tourism websites of five Southeast Asian countries. website benchmarking, namely, a strategy used to evaluate and compare website quality, has been widely used within the context of tourism studies. Yet there is a relative lack of information concerning best practices for official tourism websites as a form of promoting rural tourism and sustainability. Design/methodology/approach - By using a qualitative approach, a group of six tourism researchers were invited to evaluate official tourism websites of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines for user-friendliness, site attractiveness, marketing attractiveness and provision of information on rural tourism and sustainability. Findings - Overall, the evaluations provided by the researchers indicated that in general, the Indonesian and Malaysian websites were always perceived as the best options compared to the Thai, Philippine and Vietnamese online platforms, mainly due to their visual appeal. However, this study also highlighted that the information about rural tourism products in all the websites evaluated was regarded as being very limited. Furthermore, the variety and diversity of respondents' opinions showed that subjective components played a role in the interpretation of the websites. Practical implications - Based on the findings of this study, three main recommendations have been suggested to assist tourism websites' designers to design more impactful websites. Originality/value - The novelty of this study lies in the consideration of websites as interactional and dialectical narratives whose meanings are produced, negotiated or challenged by the users.