Abstract
An effective website is vital for a hotel to strengthen its customer relationships and harvest online sales. Yet despite the proliferation of hotel website studies, research seems to have under-emphasised a fundamental first step, the development of valid and reliable constructs and features for evaluating websites. Based on a literature review, expert judgement and in-depth interviews, this study proposes a framework for evaluating hotel websites. The results are five dimensions of website quality — information and process, value added, relationships, trust, and design and usability — reflected by 74 websites features. The paper closes with a proposed process for developing a website evaluation framework and future research opportunities.
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Appendix A: Tourism and Hospitality studies in this study
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Law, R., & Cheung, C. (2006). A Study of the Perceived Importance of the Overall Website Quality of Different Classes of Hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 25(3), 525–531.
Law, R., & Hsu, C. (2006). Importance of Hotel Website Dimensions and Attributes: Perceptions of Online Browsers and Online Purchasers. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 30(3), 295–312.
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Murphy, J., Ho, P., & Chan, C. (2005). Competitive Analyses for Marketing Electronic Wine Tourism. International Journal of Wine Marketing, 17(3), 39–54.
Murphy, J., Olaru, D., & Schegg, R. (2006). Investigating the Evolution of Hotel Internet Adoption. Information Technology & Tourism., forthcoming.
Murphy, J., Olaru, D., Schegg, R., & Frey, S. (2003). The Bandwagon Effect: Swiss Hotels’ Website and E-mail Management. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 44(1), 71–87.
Scharl, A., Wöber, K. W., & Bauer, C. (2004). An Integrated Approach to Measure Web Site Effectiveness in the European Hotel Industry. Information Technology & Tourism, 6(4), 257–271.
Schegg, R., Steiner, T., Frey, S., & Murphy, J. (2002). Benchmarks of Web Site Design and Marketing by Swiss Hotels. Information Technology & Tourism, 5(2), 73–89.
So, S. I., & Morrison, A. M. (2004). Internet Marketing in Tourism in Asia: An Evaluation of the Performance of East Asian National Tourism Organization Websites. Journal of Hospitality and Leisure Marketing, 11(4), 93–117.
Wan, C. S. (2002). The Websites of International Tourist Hotels and Tour Wholesalers in Taiwan. Tourism Management, 23(2), 155–160.
Wang, Y., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2005). Identifying the Success Factors of Web-based Marketing Strategy: An Investigation of Convention and Visitors Bureaus in the United States. Journal of Travel Research, 43(3), 1–11.
Yuan, Y. L., Gretzel, U., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2006). The Role of Information Technology Use in American Convention and Visitors Bureaus. Tourism Management, 27(2), 326–341.
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Hashim, N.H., Murphy, J., Law, R. (2007). A Review of Hospitality Website Design Frameworks. In: Sigala, M., Mich, L., Murphy, J. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2007. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-69566-1_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-69566-1_21
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
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