Hotel Websites Research Articles

Marketing and Commercial Activities Offered on Croatian Five-Star Hotel Web Sites

Tourism is the crucial industry for Croatian economy and this statement is supported by high growth rates of tourism income. One of the important factors for tourism are accommodation facilities, especially hotels. Due to the fact that we live in the information technologies era, the Internet became a new space for doing economic and business activities in all spheres, and especially important in tourism. Hotel Web sites become increasingly important, and this phenomenon will be analyzed in this paper. Using a data base containing data for the 30 five-star hotel Web sites, a survey was conducted on how much these new technologies are used in tourism industry in Croatia. Marketing and commercial activities offered on hotel Web sites have a significant impact on the hotel's commercial success. Characteristics of the five-star hotels hotel Web sites will be examined and compared thought the basic groups of Web business activities. Also some recommendations for the successful hotel Web sites will be provided. Hotel Web site in the future will not be only a promotion channel, but also an active generator of the hotel business and development.

The Usage of the Recreation Activities on the Hotels Web Sites as a Marketing Instrument: A Research in Antalya Destination

Günümüzde artan turist hareketlerine paralel olarak, geniş kapasiteli büyük konaklama işletmeleri de önde gelen destinasyonların temel turizm unsurları haline gelmektedir. Konaklama işletmeleri yöneticileri, turistlerin tatil deneyimleri esnasında boş zamanlarını daha etkin/verimli kullanmalarını sağlamak ve eğlenceli zaman geçirebilmelerini sağlamak için çeşitli boş zaman değerlendirme etkinlikleri planlayarak sunarken, web sitelerinde bu etkinlikleri bir pazarlama enstrümanı olarak kullanmaktadırlar. Bu araştırmanın amacı; a) Antalya turistik bölgesinde faaliyet gösteren, beş yıldızlı konaklama işletmelerinin pazarlama enstrümanı olarak kendi web sitelerinde yer verdikleri rekreasyon faaliyetlerinin ve b) otel işletmelerinin Antalya destinasyonunun rekreasyon potansiyellerinin pazarlanmasına yönelik rollerinin belirlenmesidir. Araştırmanın örneklemini Antalya turistik bölgesinde yer alan beş yıldızlı konaklama işletmeleri (n/288) oluşturmaktadır. Örneklem olarak seçilen konaklama işletmelerinin web siteleri değerlendirilerek, nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden içerik analizine tabi tutulmuştur. Araştırma sonucunda konaklama işletmelerinin pazarlama enstrümanı olarak sitelerinde yansıttığı rekreasyon faaliyetlerinin su sporları, spor aktiviteleri, eğlence, oyun etkinlikleri, güzellik-bakım-rehabilite, animasyon, çocuk etkinlikleri ve kurs etkinlikleri olmak üzere sekiz tema altında toplandığı görülmüştür. Ayrıca araştırma sonucunda beklenilenin aksine otellerin web sitelerinde Antalya destinasyonuna yönelik rekreasyon potansiyelini ve çekici faktörlerini göz ardı ettikleri keşfedilmiştir.

Online Hotel Booking Systems in Romania

If in the past the websites were used by hotels only for promoting their products and services, nowadays are used to attract customers and to offer them the opportunity to book rooms online directly without using other intermediaries. The main objective of this article is to identify the level of online booking systems uptake by hotels in Romania. In order to support this objective we developed a qualitative study based on several research methods which include: websites analysis, documents review like promotional materials, personal observations and official statistics analysis. The paper starts with a presentation of the Romanian hotel industry focusing on the main characteristics of different types of hotel units. The Romanian hotel industry grew steadily in the last ten years, offering now a wide range of accommodations characterized by diversity, accessibility and affordability. Further, we focus on literature review, and because the existing hospitality literature has limited number of papers that investigated the perceptions of hotel website users on the importance of specific features of hotel websites, we create a framework with attributes for analysing the hotel websites. Next, we will present the result of a research we carried out in Romania on the implementation of booking engines on hotel's websites. Based on the results of this research we will overview the online booking engines used by hotels in Romania and we will highlight the main characteristics and features of these systems.

Hotel website performance: evidence from a transition country

The Purpose – An evaluation of 197 hotel websites in Croatia was conducted to determine whether hotels in this economically lagging transition country exploit the potentials of the Internet as a marketing tool. Design/Methodology/Approach – A team of 30 trained assistants evaluated the websites using an amended modified Balanced Scorecard (mBSC) approach from the user-friendliness, site attractiveness, marketing effectiveness, and F&B informativeness perspectives. MANOVA was used to test main and interaction effects of hotel size, quality rating, and location on four website performance perspectives. Findings – Although hoteliers recognize the importance of online presence, most are not effectively using websites from the user-friendliness, marketing effectiveness, and F&B perspectives. Hotel quality rating, location, and their two-way interaction are significant in explaining differences in site attractiveness and marketing effectiveness. Hotel size does not explain the differences among the four website perspectives. Originality – In lieu of the rapidly evolving IT and consumer trends, this study provides hoteliers with an updated website assessment tool that can serve as a point of comparison against contemporary e-marketing approaches. Moreover, since tourism website evaluation is an under researched topic in transition economies, this article makes a contribution in the needed direction. The study ends with a discussion of results and implications for hoteliers, policy makers, and scholars.

An Analysis of the Changing Roles of Hotel Concierges

The focus of this research was to analyze how the role of the hotel concierge has changed with regard to the types of services offered and the volume and types of customer requests that concierges in the United States receive. Concierges in selected major cities were surveyed. Concierges felt that guests of today are more savvy and that technology helped them give better information and service. However, they felt that although guests have access to a great deal of information, most guests continue to rely on personal recommendations from concierges. Concierges also have new roles such as monitoring hotel websites or social media sites and are confronted with a great deal of new and changing information. Conclusions stem from the fact that although hotel companies have a great deal of technology available to them, the person service provided by concierges is still preferred by customers. The literature related to the use of concierge services is sparse and therefore, this paper was intended to provide a basis for future investigation. Implications related to maintaining a high level of guest were discussed.

The Tangibility and Intangibility of e-Service Quality

This research aims to explore the effect of e-service quality on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Especially, the current paper focuses on customer perceptions and reactions to the tangible factors of e-service quality in the Business-to-Customer (B2C) area. This tangible eservice quality includes web design esthetics, ease of use, virtual tour, and visualization. In addition, intangible e-service quality involves information content, reliability, security, and customization. In order to investigate the interrelations among tangible and intangible eservice quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty, the survey is conducted. Data from 468 tourists, who have purchased hotel packages during the last three months from hotel Web sites, is used for testing the hypothesized model. The result shows that the significant effect of tangible e- e-service quality on the intangible e-service quality and the significant effectiveness of e-service quality in improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

An Assessment Methodology for Hotel Websites

It is essential for hotel companies to evaluate and improve website performance in order to keep and increase their online presence and competitiveness in the marketplace. Based on the relative literature, in this article, the authors adapt the Web Assessment Index (WAI) to evaluate the attractiveness of the hotel websites. This has been validated in other studies in the literature, and measures the quality of a Website based on 4 dimensions: visibility, speed, navigability, and content. An application compares the performance of 10 hotels from each of the 10 top cities destinations in the world. The results show that there were significant differences between cities in the overall index and also between 4-stars and 5-stars hotels. The authors’ study also found a significant correlation between the WAI and the room price, so the more expensive hotels also show the best sites according with our index. The results could be useful for hoteliers to conduct a benchmarking analysis of the best sites, and propose improvements.

A Modified Fuzzy Hierarchical TOPSIS Model for Hotel Website Evaluation

The performance of commercial websites is a critical issue that has a significant effect on consumers’ online decision-making. This study develops and applies a fuzzy model to assess the performance of hotel websites. It presents a fuzzy decision-making approach to the evaluation of tourism website performance that integrates consumer perceptions with a hierarchical model. The model consists of a fuzzy multi-criteria procedure that weighs evaluation criteria in a hierarchy structure and defuzzifies the matrix in a simpler and more accurate way. The study’s findings include a new website usefulness evaluation framework and a newly developed fuzzy hierarchical TOPSIS model. The results from applying this model indicate that the functionality and usability dimensions are equally important for hotel websites. The ranking of hotel website performance is listed in terms of usefulness, functionality, and usability.

Virtual Reality to Help Relieve Travel Anxiety

This study presents empirical evidence of the benefit of viewing narrative video clips on embedded virtual reality (VR) websites of hotels to relieve travel anxiety. As the effectiveness of using VR functions to relieve travel anxiety has been shown, we proposed that a VR website enhanced with narrative video clips could relieve travelers’ anxiety about accommodations by showing the important aspects of a hotel. Thus, we created a website with a narrative video showing the escape route from a hotel room and another narrative video showing the surrounding neighborhood. We then conducted experiments by having human subjects explore the enhanced VR website and fill out a questionnaire. The results confirmed our hypothesis that there is a statistically significant relationship between relief from travel anxiety and the use of narrative videos on embedded VR websites of hotels.

Effective advertising appeals for websites of small boutique hotels

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether rational and emotional appeals are more effective for small boutique hotel websites in Australia. Specifically, it assesses how attitudes towards websites, service expectations and attitudes towards boutique hotels will influence purchase intention under the two different types of appeals.Design/methodology/approach – Using a systematic intercept approach, a total of 249 useable data was collected in a large suburb of Western Australia. Results were analysed using t‐test and a series of multiple regressions.Findings – The results show boutique hotel websites that used emotional appeals performed differently to those that used rational appeals. Further analysis shows that emotional appeals evoked more favourable attitudes towards the website and attitudes towards the boutique hotel. In addition, websites that utilised emotional appeals were a stronger predictor of purchase intention.Research limitations/implications – The research focuses only o...

A multidimensional data model using the fuzzy model based on the semantic translation

With the rapid development of Web 2.0 sites such as Blogs and Wikis users are encouraged to express opinions about certain products, services or social topics over the web. There is a method for aggregating these opinions, called Opinion Aggregation, which is made up of four steps: Collect, Identify, Classify and Aggregate. In this paper, we present a new conceptual multidimensional data model based on the Fuzzy Model based on the Semantic Translation to solve the Aggregate step of an Opinion Aggregation architecture, which allows exploiting the measure values resulting from integrating heterogeneous information (including unstructured data such as free texts) by means of traditional Business Intelligence tools. We also present an entire Opinion Aggregation architecture that includes the Aggregate step and solves the rest of steps (Collect, Identify and Classify) by means an Extraction, Transformation and Loading process. This architecture has been implemented in an Oracle Relational Database Management System. We have applied it to integrate heterogeneous data extracted from certain high end hotels websites, and we show a case study using the collected data during several years in the websites of high end hotels located in Granada (Spain). With this integrated information, the Data Warehouse user can make several analyses with the benefit of an easy linguistic interpretability and a high precision by means of interactive tools such as the dashboards.

Critical Success Factors for Positive User Experience in Hotel Websites

This research presents the development of a critical success factor matrix for increasing positive user experience of hotel websites based upon user ratings. Firstly, a number of critical success factors for web usability have been identified through the initial literature review. Secondly, hotel websites were surveyed in terms of critical success factors identified through the literature review. Thirdly, Herzberg’s motivation theory has been applied to the user rating and the critical success factors were categorized into two areas. Finally, the critical success factor matrix has been developed using the two main sets of data.

Alleviating travel anxiety through virtual reality and narrated video technology

This study presents an empirical evidence of benefit of narrative video clips in embedded virtual reality websites of hotels for relieving travel anxiety. Even though it was proven that virtual reality functions do provide some relief in travel anxiety, a stronger virtual reality website can be built when narrative video clips that show video clips with narration about important aspects of the hotel. We posit that these important aspects are 1. Escape route and 2. Surrounding neighborhood information, which are derived from the existing research on anxiety disorder as well as travel anxiety. Thus we created a video clip that showed and narrated about the escape route from the hotel room, another video clip that showed and narrated about surrounding neighborhood. We then conducted experiments with this enhanced virtual reality website of a hotel by having human subjects play with the website and fill out a questionnaire. The result confirms our hypothesis that there is a statistically significant relationship between the degree of travel anxiety and psychological relief caused by the use of embedded virtual reality functions with narrative video clips of a hotel website (Tab. 2, Fig. 3, Ref. 26).

Who booked five-star hotels in Macau? A study of hotel guests' online booking intention

The Internet now serves as a useful tool for suppliers and consumers to communicate information and enable purchasing online. Due to its importance in the travel industry, the Internet has attracted attention from both academic researchers and industrial practitioners. Over the last two decades, various approaches have been taken to investigate travelers' online satisfaction and purchase intention. This research is the one of the first attempts that explores the demographic profile of visitors to five-star hotels in Macau, including their choice of information search channels and hotel booking options, the most frequently used online purchasing channels, and the influence of demographic characteristics on channel selection. The findings indicate a direction for future analysis of the Macau online travel market. The study shows that more than half of the respondents had made their reservations online, and the most popular channel for searching hotel information was individual hotel websites. This paper provides useful information for travel industrial managers not only about hotel guests' propensity to search and book online, but also on why some consumers did not use online channels to purchase.

Menus as Marketing Tools: Developing a Resort Hotel Restaurant Menu Typology

Menus as Marketing Tools: Developing a Resort Hotel Restaurant Menu Typology Resort hotels are unique. Resort hotel guests generally stay longer than for other hotel types and often do not venture outside the resort. They are therefore a captive audience. Their perceptions of the quality of the food and beverage offer in a resort hotel may be crucial in their selection of that resort hotel. Putting a menu on a resort hotel’s website may influence resort hotel selection by potential guests, particularly those with special dietary requirements. This paper develops a typology of menu types and explores their use by resort hotel restaurants worldwide. Following the development of the typology, analysis of the online dinner menus of the 66 resort hotels included on the 2011 World’s Best Hotels/Travel + Leisure website against the typology was undertaken. 39 of the 66 resort hotel restaurants offered online menus. The menus ranged from offering little or no description of menu items (8) to offering detailed descriptions of menu items (7). Some emphasized the affective or sensory aspects of menu items (3) or the use of local and/or organic foods (11). Six menus offered geographic labelling or branding to indicate the provenance of their dishes. Menu descriptions promoting the use of local foods and wines enhanced the Sense of Place and differentiated a resort hotel product from its competitors increasing its perceived value to guests. Four restaurants offered tasting menus. The study concludes that not displaying a restaurant menu on a resort hotel website is a lost opportunity.

Predicting Browsers and Purchasers of Hotel Websites

A study of the online browsing and purchasing habits of some 1,400 outbound travelers in Hong Kong demonstrates the analytical power of weight-of-evidence (WOE) data mining. The WOE approach allows analysts to identify and transform the variables with the most predictive power regarding the likelihood of tourists’ online preferences and decisions. The study found that just over one-third of the respondents browsed hotel-related websites, and about half of those browsers had booked a room on those sites. Browsers in Hong Kong tended to be young, well educated, and well traveled. Those who used the hotel websites for purchases were, of course, part of the browser group, and were likewise relatively well educated. However, one unexpected variable set off those who used the websites for a hotel purchase, the length of their most recent trip. One possible reason is that long-haul tourists want to be sure of their accommodations, or this may reflect hotels’ free-night offers. The convenient use of model-based customer segmentation and decision rules would help hospitality practitioners effectively manage their marketing resources and activities, and enhance information-based marketing strategies to attract target customers.

Generalising user behaviour in online travel sites through the Travel 2.0 website acceptance model

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse tourist behaviour with regard to the new Web 2.0‐based sites, or Travel 2.0 websites. Concretely, it seeks to generalise the underlying behavioural model in explaining intention to use such sites according to its main determinants.Design/methodology/approachThe authors develop a structural equations model (SEM), which is applied to three websites selected for the study – i.e. the blog of a hotel, its Tripadvisor community and its Facebook profile. Rigorous empirical research was conducted by asking respondents to visualise the three different Travel 2.0 websites and complete a web questionnaire.FindingsThe findings reveal that the original technology acceptance model (TAM) is a robust underlying model for studies aimed at examining these sites. Focusing on blogs, social networks and virtual communities, the study shows that the relationship between certain cognitive and behavioural variables may vary depending on the specific website.Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited to data from a single context (a specific website or type of tool), but an approach centred on visiting a variety of web tools mitigates this restriction. The main management implications of the study are discussed in the last section. Several recommendations to improve web design and the use of Travel 2.0 websites are made. The outcomes are very interesting with a view to increasing the revenues gained through these sites.Originality/valueThe paper permits firsthand knowledge to be gained about the information needs of Travel 2.0 users. It is original in that it establishes a behavioural model that can be extrapolated to all Web 2.0 applications in the context of tourist destinations or hotel websites.

The Factors Affecting Writing Reviews in Hotel Websites

We aim to understand the people's motivation for writing the reviews in order to better explain drivers of WOM activities in the online channel for the successful implementation of the hotel marketing. For this purpose, we choose one of the popular tourist destinations: Paris. We collect data for empirical analysis from one of the biggest online hotel reservation website. Our analysis reveals that higher rating and lower price increases the propensity to write reviews. However, while the extreme rating and star score and star rating does not have any effect on the propensity to write a review. We have also found the evidence for the negative effect of larger room size on the propensity to write a review. These results imply that satisfaction rather than dissatisfaction increases people's motivation more for writing reviews in hotel websites. We briefly discuss the managerial implications of our results.

The impact of hotel property size in determining the importance of electronic distribution channels

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the use of electronic distribution systems (EDS) in Korean hotels and investigate the differences between large and small and medium (S&M) hotels.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative and explorative study. An in‐depth interview was conducted of seven large hotels and nine S&M hotels.FindingsRegardless of size, the surveyed hotels received, on average, more reservations through offline systems than online. It was found that large hotels showed less variation in the use of EDS than S&M hotels. While there was no distinct difference in the overall use of EDS, in terms of average, the highest percentage of hotel EDS use was demonstrated by S&M hotels. Regarding specific components and distribution flows, large hotels overall employed a variety of distribution channels, often implemented in multi‐faceted systems. S&M hotels, in most cases, adopted simpler distribution flows, i.e. hotel web sites and online travel agencies. This difference seems to be the result of the affiliation of primarily large hotels with huge hotel corporations.Research limitations/implicationsAn emphasis has been placed on the current use of an EDS within S&M hotels, given their greater competitive challenge with regards to their larger counterparts.Practical implicationsMeaningful implications are made that building an extensive and effective information system appropriate to the size and type of the hotel's operations is especially needed by S&M hotels.Originality/valueThe paper addresses EDS issues specifically for S&M hotels.

An evaluation of Spanish hotel websites: Informational vs. relational strategies

The websites of many hotels are beginning to incorporate new online tools such as social media in order to maintain closer relationships with clients and, possibly, investors. The objectives of this study are to identify the strategies pursued by Spanish hotel websites and to analyze the relationship between the size of the hotel and website strategy. The results show that Spanish hotel websites are primarily built for customers and that the information oriented toward investors is relatively scarce. Further, there is a significant positive relationship between the size of the hotel and the information provided in two of the perspectives studied, those of the investor and presence on social media. Lastly, significant relationships were identified between the customer, marketing, Web 2.0 and social media categories. However, significant relationships were not identified between the investor perspective and any of the other four categories investigated.