The Importance Of ICT In The Hotel Industry

1131 Words3 Pages

2.1 Why the hotel industry
The focus is on the hotel industry because; the geographical location of a hotel has a major impact on its operations and profitability (Namasivayam, K., Enz, C. A., &
Siguaw, J. A. (2000). Furthermore geographical location of a hotel greatly determines the profile of its visitors, the size of its market and the level of competition that it has to face. These three variables also have a strong impact on the ICT adoption tendency of a hotel. This is because the ICT adoption tendency of a hotel can be linked mainly to its expectations about the value addition that ICTs can provide to its customers, as well as the belief about the expansion of its target market through ICTs. A hotel will therefore be more inclined to …show more content…

Thus, based on the profile of a hotel’s visitors, the size of the market, or the intensity of competition, hotels may differ in their levels of ICT adoption propensity for example found significant impact of geographical location on the adoption and use of the internet among hotels Law, R., &
Jogaratnam, G. (2005)
Some authors believe the primary role of IT in the hotel industry is to improve productivity (Ham, Gon Kim, & Jeong, 2005). Many tourism and hospitality researchers claim that ICT is a competitive advantage factor (Buhalis, 2003; Polo
Pena & Frias Jamilena, 2010; Camison, 2000; Sunil and Islam, 2005; Luque-Martinez,
Castaneda-Garcia & Frias-Jamilena, 2007; Buhalis, 1998; Sheldon, 1997; Ma, Buhalis
& Song, 2007). These authors understand ICT as the hardware and software, the groupware and netware as well as the intellectual capacity (humanware) to develop, programme and maintain the related equipment. Indeed, different kinds of the abovementioned “wares” such as super and mini computers, office applications, tele-conferencing, the Internet, intranet, central reservation systems (CRS), …show more content…

Some of the world’s largest GDS (Global Distribution
System) namely Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus and Worldspsan are examined. Besides analyzing the telecommunication technologies in the industry, the hospitality sector, entertainment sector, transport sector, management sector and other intermediaries have been diligently explored.
2.5 ICT in Tourism and Hospitality Sector
Parsons and Oja (2013) mention online reservations systems as one of the greatest impacts of ICT on tourism and hospitality sector. Major travel companies such as
Expedia, Orbitz, and Thomas Cook, as well as, medium and even small sized tourism and hospitality firms have online reservation functionalities on official company website. Online reservation capabilities provide substantial cost saving opportunities for businesses in tourism and hospitality sector that otherwise would have been spent on human resources making reservations in a manual manner.
Moreover, according to Mihalic and Buhalis (2013), while the majority of businesses in tourism and hospitality sector have adopted various components of ICT to

Open Document