Should the parent directory of the main site-navigation be clickable or not?!?

[DFM_GSA]

Highly discussed in our team is the question:

Should all parent navigation items be clickable, or only the ones that have no child menu appearing on mouse over?

At Starwood Germany, we  would like to adjust the main navigation for all our websites in order to improve consistency and user friendliness. At the moment, most of our websites feature both clickable non-clickable parent items, depending on whether the items have a corresponding child menu (appearing on mouse over) or not.

See example here: http://www.imperialvienna.com/en

Some of our team members believe it might be irritating and/or confusing for the user if some items are clickable while others are not.

What do you think? Any thoughts and insights would be truly appreciated!

[goodlegaladvice]

I think it should be one way or the other.... Especially if you want returning visitors they might not notice the first time but after a while people are bound to notice

[H1Digital43]

I would be considering the content the parent category could have, if for example the parent category content is not to dissimilar from that of the child pages then, perhaps it does not need to be a page in its own right, however, if the content provides an overview for the children pages of the category it might then be useful to be a page. Either way, I think consistency one way or the other is key here.

I Hope I have not caused any confusion