Internet is an important tool for information searching and purchasing of products especially in tourism. This paper investigates the impact of demographic and travel characteristics of hotel guests on online and offline reservations. It also examines the importance of hotel attributes in selecting a hotel and the differences in priorities between guests who book their accommodation online and ...

This contribution aims to provide an analysis of the current state of web accessibility in the tourism industry with the focus on the Austrian hotel sector. The results of the conducted study verify previous research, showing that tourism organizations considerably lack awareness of web accessibility. A three dimensional hotel categorization model on accessibility is introduced to encompass the...

The long term evaluation of the Sacarino robot is presented in this paper. This study aimed to improve the robot‘s capabilities as a bellboy in a hotel; walking alongside the guests, providing information about the city and the hotel and providing hotel-related services. The paper establishes a three-stage assessment methodology based on the continuous measurement of a set of metrics regarding ...

Recently, we can refer to user reviews in the shopping or hotel reservation sites. However, with the exponential growth of information of the Internet, it is becoming increasingly difficult for a user to read and understand all the materials from a large-scale reviews. In this paper, we propose a method for classifying hotel reviews written in Japanese into criteria, e.g., location and faciliti...

The recent growth of internet applications on hospitality and tourism provokes on-line consumer comments and reviews. Many researchers and practitioners have named this enormous potential as “e-WOM (electronic word of mouth)”. Travel comments are important experiential information for the potential travellers. Many researches have been conducted to analyse the effects of e-WOM on hotel consumer...

a r t i c l e i n f o The hotel industry has been hit hard by the economic recession. Given the economic challenges facing businesses have not been seen since the Great Depression, hotel executives are making unstructured or first-time decisions, responding to the current business climate. Using McCracken's (1988) long interview method, four Pacific Asia hotel executives provide insights of how...

The Internet has led to an explosion of product choices facing consumers. When consumers face many options, intermediaries can help by ranking them, which in turn can influence how consumers search and what they ultimately purchase. To understand the role of intermediaries’ rankings, it is important to separate the effect of the position in which a firm is displayed in an intermediary’s listing...

In this study the technical efficiency was analyzed for four hotels of Teixeira Duarte Group - a renowned Portuguese hotel chain. An ranking established these units using Stochastic Frontier Analysis. This methodology allowed discriminating between measurement error and systematic inefficiencies, enabling identification main inefficiency causes. The results showed that distance to airport highe...

One of the largest operators of hotel properties, with over 7,200 hotel properties in every category _ from upscale to economy _ was faced with a challenge when it came to its reservation system. As mergers and acquisitions emerged as a popular solution to the decline of occupancy and revenue across the industry, the hotel operator, known for its exceptional customer service and value, sought a...