The main purpose of the study is to develop a robust and reliable model which evaluates the quality of hospitality websites, or more specifically, hotel websites.
The literature is deeply overviewed ...and an advisory board is consulted for determination of the critical factors affecting the quality of a hospitality website. Appointed criteria are organised as a hierarchy according to their orientation. A hybrid model including two multi-criteria decision making approaches, namely the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Preference Ranking Organisation Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE), is proposed to achieve the purpose of the study. The AHP is utilized to weigh the criteria, and, ranking of the alternatives are provided via PROMETHEE. For the case study, websites of five-star hotels in Ankara, which is the capital city of the Republic of Turkey, are evaluated.
Encouraging results are obtained for the case study by the proposed model.
The proposed model provides reliable and robust results for any qualitative or quantitative criteria to evaluate hospitality websites which is a very important task for both customers, and enterprises, even for governments.
Purpose
This paper aims to present the findings of an analysis of the environmentally sustainable policies and practices (ESPPs) used by independent and chain-affiliated hotels. The study aimed to ...ascertain the engagement of hotels with ESPPs and provide tentative evidence of their commitment towards meeting the expectations of environmentally conscious stakeholders.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used secondary data and content analysis to examine the ESPPs of a sample of 220 hotels in Melbourne, Australia. A systematic review was conducted of hotel websites to reveal, in a tabulated way, the range of reporting of environmental material provided by various rated hotels.
Findings
This analysis suggests that environmentally friendly business practices are prominently displayed by the hotels sampled; however, independent non-chain affiliated hotels are yet to adopt ESPPs in any visible way.
Originality/value
This study was broadly informed by stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) and aimed to ascertain the engagement of hotels with ESPPs. While previous studies have focussed on chain hotels, this research involved a greater range of hotels of different profiles to highlight the mix of ESPPs across the hotel sector. Rather than merely examining the corporate websites of hotel companies, the research additionally examined ESPPs at the individual hotel property level, as this is where policies are implemented into practice. The extant literature to date has not studied the extent to which ESPPs are adopted by independent and chain-affiliated hotels at this level, and it is this research gap that the study addresses.
The purpose of the article is to get an insight into the content of the websites of Slovenian four- and five-star hotels and, based on the set criteria, to determine which websites are more utilized ...than others. We defined the utilization criteria and analysed all four and five-star hotels in Slovenia using data clustering analysis. The content of the websites, analysed in 2017, at the first glance seems diverse, but when comparing their content, we concluded that there are no major statistical differences. An important discovery of the research falls on the security of most of the analysed websites – it is very flawed and sometimes misleading. The potential for interactivity and gamification remains untapped despite the various recommendations of experts and academics.
The online purchase through web channels regarding travel related product services have really taken an unprecedented growth. The objectives of the study is to determine how information quality ...available on the websites of the hotels influence the intentions of customers of online bookings. Furthermore, the study also seeks to analyze how etrust as mediator influence the customer online booking intention.A simple random sampling technique used to collect the data with help of a questionnaire as the data collection tool to survey the customers in Delhi. The total valid sample size was 400. The framework and hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM empirically. The paper found significant and positive relation between information quality and online hotel booking intentions of users whereas the relation between source credibility and online hotel booking intentions found insignificant. In addition, etrust partially mediate between information quality and online booking intentions through hotel website and no mediation between source credibility and online hotel booking intentions.
Purpose
The main purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of embedded social media channels and determine whether the embedded social media channels enhance the overall experience of ...travelers using the hotel Web sites.
Design/methodology/approach
A true-experimental, between-group and post-test-only design was used to address the primary research questions. Two privately accessible complete versions of the Web site (one with embedded social media channels and one without them) were designed for the experiment. The uses and gratifications approach was used to test the proposed hypotheses. Data were analyzed using ANOVA.
Findings
The results of this study revealed that embedded social media channels on the hotel Web site enhanced travelers’ social gratifications of perceived social interaction. Apart from these benefits for travelers seeking social gratifications, embedded social media channels did not enhance the overall experience (content and process gratifications) of travelers using the Web site.
Practical implications
In the case of embedded social media on hotel Web sites, this study suggests that hotel managers measure return on engagement to examine the effectiveness of embedded social media, instead of return on investment.
Social implications
The study revealed that the emergence of embedded social media channels and their integration on hotel Web sites will have significant influence on travelers who seek social gratifications.
Originality/value
The findings of this study offer new empirical evidence that embedded social media channels enhance only travelers’ perceived social interaction during their first visit to the hotel Web site.
This study aims to discuss online consumer trust (eTrust) in the hotel industry from the perspective of Chinese web users. Based on literature review and results of interviews with and focus group ...discussions among Internet users, hotel practitioners, and academic experts, a measurement scale was formulated. With two phases of data collection, this research found Chinese web users moderately trusted hotels’ own websites while doubted their intentions to fulfill promises delivered on the websites. Statistical analysis confirmed the suggestion that eTrust was a triple-dimensional construct which consisted of integrity, benevolence, and ability. Notably, the dimension of integrity which refers to honesty and promise fulfilling was regarded the most important by Chinese Internet users. The proposed eTrust scale revealed statistically satisfactory validity and reliability, indicating its soundness in guiding future similar studies. Based on the findings, theoretical implications as well as suggestions for Chinese hoteliers were offered.
Hotel websites display textual and non-textual strategies with the aim of turning online visitors into customers. This article focuses on two related textual aspects: how consumers are discursively ...construed and how conditional constructions are used in order to persuade and convince consumers of the adequacy of the hotel. The framework adopted for the analysis combines Stern’s notion of ‘implied consumer’ with a corpus-driven approach. The corpus data comprises 114 British hotel websites and totals half a million words. This is a subcorpus of COMETVAL, a database compiled at the University of València. The results reveal the importance of a number of words that address consumers directly or indirectly. These words intertwine with others to form patterns that help establish a bond between hoteliers and their clients. Further exploration of the corpus confirmed that some conditional sequences such as if you and should you are used by advertisers to speculate about the needs and wishes of consumers that the hotel can fulfil for them. The analysis suggests that conditional structures are a distinctive discursive characteristic strongly associated with the dialogic nature of the discourse hotel websites.
Corporate websites offer hotels ample space and opportunity to express their identities to their stakeholders, but for lack of empirical research in this area, it is yet to be known the extent to ...which hotels utilize this platform for corporate identity (CI) communication. Aiming to fill this void, this study analyzed the website contents of 123 hotels in Hong Kong to determine the extent to which the hotels utilize their own websites to transmit information about their identities. The results indicated that CI elements relating to corporate design such as logo and slogan were commonly communicated by all the sampled hotels. However, CI information relating to corporate structure, strategy, culture, and behavior was communicated by less than 60% of the hotels. In addition, the findings demonstrated a relationship between CI communication and the type of hotel operation, with chain-affiliated hotels communicating more CI-related information than independent hotels. From a practical standpoint, these findings can be used to enrich the information contents of hotels' websites so that the benefits of CI communication can be realized.
ONLINE REPUTATION OF 4- AND 5-STAR HOTELS Rabadán-Martín, Inmaculada; Aguado-Correa, Francisco; Padilla-Garrido, Nuria
Tourism and hospitality management,
05/2020, Volume:
26, Issue:
1
Journal Article, Paper
Peer reviewed
Open access
Purpose - The aim of this research is to analyse how hotels incorporate their online reputation on their official websites, the characteristics of that information, as well as the variables that may ...influence it. Design/Methodology/Approach - We analysed 503 websites of 4- and 5-star hotels in Andalusia (Spain). It was verified on a case-by-case basis whether the hotel publicized its online reputation, the type (numerical or non-numerical) and the source of its reputation (internal or external). In addition, a general profile was established for each establishment. After a descriptive analysis, possible dependent relationships between the online reputation and characteristics of the establishment were analysed. Findings - Over half of the hotels opted to publicize their online reputation on their own websites, and a little over half of those used the external online reputation sources. Both circumstances were related to factors such as modality and the hotel size. TripAdvisor ratings were a reference point among the hotels under analysis. Originality of the research - This study provides insight into the manner in which hotels are reflecting their online reputation on their official websites, the variables that may influence this behaviour and the extent to which the third-party reviews are visible on their websites.
Credibility is a function associated with promotional genres and persuasion, and a powerful marketing concept (Eisend, 2006; Ming, 2006) which provides trustworthiness about the quality of products ...or services offered by hotels (Suau-Jimenez, 2012a, 2019). It is partly attained through the hotel's self-mentioning in websites. When this self-mentioning is agentive with action verbs, the main instantiation is the pronoun we, projecting closeness and assertiveness. However, this self-representation is also construed with depersonalized realizations like the hotel's proper name, other nominalizations or even pronouns like it and they, which provide attenuating aspects and create a sense of distance. The current corpus-based study of 112 hotel websites hypothesizes that this attenuation may diminish closeness of the authorial voice (Brown & Levinson, 1987), thus displaying authority, following disciplinary and generic constraints. Results suggest that discursive closeness and distance, intertwined with personalized and depersonalized self-representations of the authorial voice, may aid to improve credibility. KEYWORDS: credibility, persuasion, closeness, distance, agentive self-mentioning, attenuation, hotel websites.
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