Internet and agro-tourism sector for regional development in Crete: a multicriteria ranking

Nowadays, effective use of internet provides an opportunity to identify successful practices and policies for innovative business models in order to promote regional development through agro-tourism. In Crete, agro-tourism entrepreneurs have developed commercial activities in the internet where customers and firms are linked up together in the exchange of agro-tourism services. This paper aims to assess 29 websites of commercial purpose within agro-tourism sector in Crete and rank them according to 13 content, design, navigation and e-commerce adoption criteria. Each criterion presence is studied and then all the websites were ranked according to these criteria using the multicriteria analysis method of PROMETHEE II (preference ranking organisation method for enrichment evaluation). Results confirm that internet adoption in agro-tourism sector in Crete is in satisfactory level. The findings lead to policy implications for agro-tourism firms' entrepreneurs to use internet technologies and social media as a powerful marketing tool.