SUN INTERNATIONAL WEBSITE ANALYSIS

As Africa's most significant tourism, leisure and gambling group, Sun International has become world-renowned for their leisure operations which include resorts, luxury hotel products, and casinos in 14 jurisdictions in South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland; all of which are visited by over 50 000 guests from over 50 countries. The Sun International Group has as such become a timeless tourism operation in Africa over the years, offering outstanding services and entertainment to ensure that each and every one of their guests experience a unique African experience in one of Sun International's themed resorts, hotels and casinos, and are ultimately treated like royalty. With great popularity and success that has been experienced in successant years, and which is constantly on the increase, the Sun International Group continues to expand and spread its wings into further endeavours by adding more luxury resorts, casinos and hotels to their name.

What adds to the greatness and success of the Sun International Group is that, with so many holiday resorts and casinos located in unique destinations all over Africa which are differentiated in terms of experience, theming, and a mix of entertainment options on offer, Sun International is able to give every holiday-maker that approaches their group with the unique vacation experience they are looking for. It is therefore no lie to say that Sun International is the leader in entertainment and holiday accommodation in Africa.

With such an amazing reputation and the big name in tourism which they have rightfully earned for themselves over the years of operation, it is no surprise that when it comes to being a leader, Sun International plays their cards well. As such, as a reflection of their success, Sun International has an amazing, fun, and user-friendly website available over the World Wide Web, making themselves even more quickly and easily accessible by an increased amount of people across Africa and the rest of the globe.

The Sun International website is a great success in terms of being well structured and organised; but is best viewed in a 1024x768 resolution. The main design implements clean-cut lines, with no distractions, and a limited colour palette of navy blue, golden brown, and white.

What gives the Sun International website its intriguing excitement is due to the interesting layout of the site as a whole. The homepage functions as the "command centre", with links which go to each member of the Sun International Group displayed as "mini sites" with their own colours and images (making each of these appear as individual sites) yet still comply with the basic structure of the homepage. To elaborate, by clicking on Resorts and Casinos on the homepage and choosing Carnival City, the user is transported to a uniquely looking site with its own relevant links, yet it still falls under the URL of the homepage and is merely a sub page. This is a fun facet and interesting facet of the Sun International website as it gives room for each of its members to entice the user through the representation of their individual themes and the general experience that they wish to promote.

Initially built to promote user-friendliness, the Sun International website has a number of tools which save a user time and a lot of frustration. On the homepage of the Sun International website there is a link which a user can go to to make quick and easy accommodation bookings online. Reserving your hotel and holiday accommodation has never been this easy. A few clicks of a mouse and you're booked for an unforgettable stay at one of Sun International's finest entertainment resorts.

The Sun International website is incredibly informative, and includes anything and everything about the Sun International Group that one would want to know.

As the result of the immensity of information which the Sun International website boasts, a keen focus has been placed on making navigation as quick and as easy as possible. Thereby, due to the implementation of an organised and rather basic structure, navigating through the website is very easy. The main links are placed on the far left side of the site and drop down to display more links relevant to each main title; there are also links to highlights just to the right of this bar. Another effect of the Sun International website being loaded with information, is the result that navigation can tend to be confusing for a user who has little or no experience in searching through a website for particular information. There is however a great solution which has been implemented into the Sun International website as assistance to make sure that no user leaves without the information they initially came to the site looking for, and that is the search box which is located just above the main links bar on the far left. This is a very useful tool, and just reaffirms again the user-friendliness that this website promotes.

An amazing additional feature which the Sun International website boasts is the way in which a user can change the language of the entire site by either clicking on the link "languages" (to be found on the far left with the other main links), or by clicking the relevant flag displayed clearly on the homepage. In this way, the Sun International website allows for a degree of interactivity by giving the user different options from which can he choose to suit his individual needs (just as does having different themed resorts and casinos for guests to choose from when looking for a specific entertainment and leisure experience).

Taking into account the search engine optimisation which has been done on the Sun International website, it further a great success. Being optimised for Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher can however prove to be problematic in a few small cases. The presence of a sitemap is also evidence of good search engine optimisation. A great deal of effort has been put into the creation of the sitemap as it is so well organised and arranges everything that the Sun International website contains under the main headings of Sun International resorts and casinos, gambling, lifestyle, subscription, rates and online reservations, golf, meetings and conferences, travel professionals, about Sun International, careers, languages, events and entertainment, and tour operator. This also assists a user in better navigation through the site if there is something specific for which he is looking.

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