The E-Mail Ticket : Tourist Attractions Use Internet Web Sites to Snare Customers

Forget Hawaii, the Caribbean or the Far East. The hot new destination in travel and tourism this year is cyberspace.

Over the past month, Walt Disney Co., Six Flags Magic Mountain and the California Division of Tourism joined other newcomers in jumping aboard the Internet. Knott’s Berry Farm and Sea World are set to unveil their World Wide Web sites in coming weeks, while MCA Inc. is working on a cyber version of Jurassic Park to coincide with the May opening of the attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood.

“It’s the marketing wave of the future,” said Bonnie Rabjohn, spokesperson for Magic Mountain, which recently went online with a Web page hyping Superman the Escape, a 100-mph thrill ride slated to open in late May. “This is a terrific way to reach out to [guests] and show them how the ride is being built.”

Like modern-day ‘49ers, companies are rushing to stake claims in cyberspace, lured by its glittering potential as a marketing and merchandising bonanza. An estimated 37 million people--17% of the U.S and Canadian population age 16 and over--already have access to the Internet.

But industry watchers say getting wired isn’t synonymous with getting rich. Anybody can set up shop on the infobahn. The hard part is getting people to pull over and take a look at what you’ve got--and a lot of commercial offerings are junk.

“Many of these sites are just digital press kits,” said Jim Moloshok, senior vice president of Warner Bros. Online. “People don’t come online to be marketed to. They want to be entertained.”

To that end, big players such as Warner Bros. Inc., Disney and MCA are taking the technology to a new level. The media giants are luring visitors to their Web sites with sophisticated virtual entertainment, hoping consumers will follow up with real visits to their theme parks, films and merchandise counters.

Web surfers can download film clips from Muppet Treasure Island on the new Disney site, take a virtual ride on the Back to the Future attraction through MCA’s online address or listen to old “Superman” radio serials on the Warner Brothers Web page.

The multimedia approach is light years beyond the primitive infomercials and online brochures slapped onto the Web by many companies. But it also signals a big-bucks transformation of a medium whose biggest commercial appeal thus far has been its low cost of entry.

Asked to put a price tag on his company’s investment in online technology, Senn Moses, executive vice president of marketing for Universal Studios Hollywood, summed it up in one syllable: “Huge.”

Still, small tourism players say cyberspace remains an essentially democratic arena that is allowing them to reach a global audience on a shoestring.

Bob Warren, spokesman for the Shasta Cascade Wonderland Association, which promotes tourism in northeastern California, said the group’s Web page has logged thousands of “hits” from Web surfers since it went online last year.

Warren says it’s too early to say how many of those cyber visitors will turn into real live vacationers. But with an estimated 25% of Web users pulling in annual incomes in excess of $80,000, Warren figures that if only a fraction come to visit, it will be well worth the modest $5,000 cost of launching the site.

“We’re constantly battling what I call the ‘black hole effect.’ No one knows we’re up here,” Warren said. “We don’t have a ton of money to spend on advertising. So this is our shot at finding a more effective way of reaching potential visitors.”

But the “black hole effect” is also at work on the Web, where literally millions of sites are competing for attention. Giants such as Disney, MCA and Warner Brothers have big budgets to market their online addresses to computer users. The trick for shoestring operators is to link up to sites that generate lots of traffic, the online equivalent of opening a small business near an anchor store.

The California Division of Tourism opened such a cyber mall last month with the launch of the state’s official tourism Web page. In addition to all the usual travel information one would expect from a state tourist agency, the site is linked to the home pages of hundreds of California hotels, resorts and attractions, mostly small operators who could otherwise be overlooked by potential visitors.

Margie Kamb, owner of the Mendocino Farmhouse bed-and-breakfast, recently accepted her first totally online booking, in which a guest located her through the state Web site and made the reservation through e-mail.

“It’s exciting,” Kamb said. “But wouldn’t you know [the guest’s] last name is Strange.”

Although the dollars generated from cyber tourism are still relatively modest, high-tech watchers anticipate big things for the travel industry, whose growth has always been linked to advances in transportation and technology.

“The whole industry is geared around the quick exchange of information on things like schedules and prices,” said Richard Barber, executive director of the Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu. “The Internet is helping to decentralize information that was once proprietary. We’re going to see rapid growth in consumers making use of it.”

Barber said one of the critical issues facing the industry is the changing role of the travel agent, now that consumers can research their own vacations, make reservations and purchase tickets--all from their home computers.

But Bev Zukow, a travel agent with First Travel of California in Villa Park, says that only a small proportion of the traveling public has the computer literacy, time and inclination to book on its own. She notes that the majority of airline tickets are still sold through travel agents, even though consumers have had the ability for years to buy directly through the airlines’ 800-numbers.

“Busy people will continue to rely on travel agents,” said Zukow, who is also president of the Orange County Chapter of the American Society of Travel Agents, which recently launched its own Web site. “Personalized service is still the key.”

Indeed, amid all the hype surrounding cyberspace and the rush to establish a presence on the Web, some companies are forgetting it’s not an end in itself, says Rob Kling, professor of information and computer science at UC Irvine.

Kling says travel and tourism businesses can design the slickest Web sites in the industry, but it won’t matter if their underlying products and services don’t pass muster with consumers.

“You can’t turn yourself into an international destination by simply having a nice-looking Web page,” Kling said. “In the end, you’ve still got to have an attraction that people want to see. There’s no way a Web site can level that playing field.”

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Local Web Sites

This year’s hottest travel destination is the Internet. Area theme parks, hotels and entertainment companies are vying to lure virtual tourists to their new online attractions. A selection of travel-related home pages:

(Company: Internet address)

Disney Online: https://www.disney.com

MCA Inc.: https://www.mca.com

(including Universal Studios Hollywood)

Warner Brothers Online: https://www.warnerbros.com

Six Flags Magic Mountain: https://www.sixflagsmagicmtn.com

Anheuser-Busch theme parks: https://www.4advanture.com

(including Sea World San Diego)

Knott’s Berry Farm *: https://www.goldpage.com:80/travel/californ/knotts/knotts.htm

California Division of Tourism: https://gocalif.ca.gov

(does not use www prefix)

California Assn. of Bed and Breakfast Inns: https://www.innaccess.com

* Temporary address

Source: Individual companies and agencies