Measuring the effectiveness of a hotel web site

According to Haag et al (2008) in order to measure the effectiveness of an information system strategic initiative the organisation needs to define some key performance indicators that must be tied to the objectives of the strategic plan. The most common types of measures are usability, customer satisfaction, conversion rates and financial. In the context of a hotel establishing a web site these concepts could be applied as follows:

- Usability: how easily customers can find required information in the web site - how many ‘clicks’ it takes;

- Customer satisfaction: which can be obtained through satisfaction surveys or analysing customers that are loyal to the web site;

- Conversion rates: how many customers have the first contact with the organisation through the internet and how many contacts are converted in sales;

- Financial: such as analysis of return on investment, cost-benefit analysis of the web site and break-even analysis.

E-tourism in Developing Countries

Shanker (2008) argues that many developing countries are unable to adopt ICT strategies for tourism, which prevents these countries from several opportunities, innovation and possibilities besides keeping them apart from being competitive in the tourism market.

The UNCTAD E-tourism Initiative is a United Nations initiative that aims to enable the implementation of ICT to strengthen developing countries capacities in promoting their tourism products. The purpose of the project is to assist these countries in the creation of a e-commerce market place that enables the organisation of tourism services, the development of new products, the improvement of quality and the establishment of partnerships to improve the countries’ competitiveness as destinations.

ICTs & Internet Adoption in China's Tourism Industry

This paper illustrated ICTs and Internet Adoption in China's Tourism Industry. As we know that, the fast development of information communication technologies (ICT) and the expansion of the Internet have changed industry structures around the world. New technologies have been emerged in the tourism industry in Europe and America for more than 30 years, and trend to continue into the future. China is also fast growing country in Asia. The international tourism market is the remarkable industry in China hopes to get the huge income from this business field. So China offers the cultural and attractive tourist place to show the tourists come from around the world. This time is booming tourism factor. This research exames how the ICT and Internet gradually change the tourism industry structure in China. Then the research results found that the toursit companies still us the ITC to collect the data and handle sample documents. Although, the tourist companies don't combine the strategic ICT application with all activities, there had been done network ICT in the industry organization. Click here.