A Proposed for Assessing Hotel E-Readiness for Tourism in Southern Thailand

Abstract

This article only focuses on an overview of the Hotel E-readiness model and model design for tourism in Southern Thailand. “The convergence of information technology (IT) and communications technology (CT)” will be an important part of these technological innovations. The global economy has been turbulent during the last several years, and governments and enterprises are doing everything possible to inject momentum and effectuate sustainable growth. All member countries of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) , aims to be ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by December 2015, have come to realize that an integrated ICT technology will enhance the competitiveness and creativity of their economies and fuel the sustainable growth of the global economy. The role that information and communication technologies (ICTs) can play to support economic growth, especially on tourism, has never drawn so much attention and research. According to Networked Readiness Index (NRI), Thailand has made improvement in NRI, edging up from 77th to 74th place in 2013 and from 74th to 67th place to the latest measurement released by the World Economic Forum in2014 and ranked 3 out of 10 countries of ASEAN members. Although we still face serious challenges the impact of ICTs on tourism has become more far reaching as its transformational effects spread to several sectors of the economy and society via innovations. On this research we focus on only the hotels division in Southern of Thailand due to tourism’s economic on this area benefits very high income from oversea and ASEAN. We give an overview of the Hotel E-readiness Model that impact to tourism economic with computer networking infrastructures and communication technologies in Southern of Thailand. Our model is described on four majors - business environment, network readiness, network usage and network impacts. It aims to explore the problems and obstacles for improvement on computer networking infrastructure and communication technologies on tourism economic in southern of Thailand. Finally of this research to find out the ways and give the suggestions to improve and develop our computer networking infrastructures and communication technologies for tourism economic in southern of Thailand.