Abstract
Tourism has been featured as a rapidly growing industry with excellent opportunities for business development. There are several success factors which determine the growth of the tourism promotional endeavors of the hotels. This chapter evaluates four of the key success factors related to web based tourism promotion: trust, electronic service quality, usability and accessibility. The theoretical models available for measuring the aforementioned success factors are evaluated along with the survey on the development of research activities in these four fronts. The theoretical frameworks within each concept categories are compared and contrasted to infer the competitive advantage of each model in modeling web based tourism promotion activities. Finally, the conclusions are made on the basis of the analysis undertaken on the conceptual models in each of these categories.
TopIt is commonplace for IS/IT to be used as a strategic player, even as the principle enabler, in business success. There is also a counter argument by researchers which asks whether investments on technology are sustainable. Bocij et al. (2003, p. 514) discussed this argument and concluded that there is no significant correlation between spending on IT and profitability. However it could also be argued that the underutilization of IS/IT may create a strategic vulnerability to the organization. The European e-business market watch reports, that the overall ICT utilization remains important for competitive advantage within the tourism sector (E-Business Watch, 2005, p 7). In contrast the success greatly depends on the approach being adopted, not only on the technology itself (Gretzel et al., 2000, p. 146). Therefore developing new strategies is more productive than solely investing on emerging technologies. Apart from the above discussion, another study suggest alignment of business and IS/IT strategies as a better means to improve organizational performance (Shin, 2001, p. 227). However, a thorough analysis of business needs and the existing IS/IT mix is essential to make a case for each IS/IT investment in the current climate of a global recession.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Information Quality: The quality of information exchanged in e-commerce based business transactions.
Accessibility: The ease in which people with disabilities, people from different geographic regions and people having different internet connections could access the websites.
Electronic Service Quality (E-SQ): The quality of service provided through electronic means.
Tourism: The activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.
Trust: The perception of dependability people have on something or someone.