A study of hotel website design performance and usability

Abstract

Research has shown the importance of the Internet technology in travel planning and decision making processes. For many hotels, therefore, the corporate website has emerged as the main tool for inter-organizational and intra-organizational information exchange, as well as for sales and promotion activities. However, having a web presence is not enough for the organization to meet or exceed visitor’s expectations and convert the visitor to customer. The extent, to which the hotel websites can attract and retain traffic, significantly influences the volume of business translated on them. In order to identify antecedents and their order of significance to the hotel website`s performance, this paper is based on a study of performance of 85 hotel websites. Significance of seven main factors, which influence the two measures of the hotel website performance, the REACH and LOYALTY, was checked. Information content, Easy of Navigation, Security, Usability, and Customization were found to be the significant predictors of the hotel website REACH. Information Content, Easy of Navigation, Available, Customization and Security were found to be the significant predictors of the hotel website LOYALTY. Download Speed did not emerge as a significant predictor of either REACH or LOYALTY. The paper further explains results and based on them, suggests guidelines for the hotel website design.