Virtual Walk About: visitsaltlake.com (Individual post)

One of the first things that you notice about the Visit Salt Lake website is how commercial it is. There are advertisements in the sidebars for hotels, Sundance Film Festival, ski resorts, airfare and other typical tourist attractions. The way that the website is organized is definitely for non-locals. There are separate tabs for attractions, maps, transportation and history about Salt Lake.

The Visit Salt Lake is a private, non-profit community organization. The organization is made up of over 650 local businesses. In the organization's mission statement it states that the purpose of Visit Salt Lake is "To improve the area economy by attracting and providing support to conventions, leisure travelers, and visitors to Salt Lake County." Visit Salt Lake uses it's website exactly in that manner. The site is basically a giant advertisement for Salt Lake City. It caters to tourists by providing information that would be essential for planning a vacation to Salt Lake.

One of the funny tidbits of information that the website provided was a page debunking rumors on drinking laws in Utah. Apparently the Visit Salt Lake Bureau felt that it was necessary to address the drinking laws in Utah in order to appeal to a larger variety of people.

There seems to be a heavy emphasis on family-friendly activities on the site. There is a whole section dedicated to genealogy.

Visit Salt Lake does a good job at identifying certain aspects from Image of a City. Under the attractions tab the website highlights many of Salt Lake City's landmarks, such as The City Library,Kennecott Copper Mine, Abravanel Hall, Energy Solutions Arena and other historic landmarks. The website does not do as well in identifying districts or nodes. It mostly identifies shopping and commercial districts, but does almost nothing to highlight historic neighborhoods of Salt Lake. Areas as a whole aren't really mentioned. Mostly specific places are highlighted. This is probably because of the target demographic of the website. I am assuming that the majority of the people visiting this site are upper-middle-class families that have time and money for vacation and tourism.

Overall the site seems very helpful and informational if you are planning on taking a vacation to Salt Lake City. It might also be helpful for locals who are bored and looking for something fun to do (as long as they don't mind commercial activities). Everything on the site seems very mainstream and accessible.