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How to appraise hotel website?



Developing a hotel website helps hotels to disseminate and promote its information, target guests worldwide, and facilitate hotel bookings. From the perspective of suppliers, hotel websites are well-recognized as a worldwide distribution channel for hotel products and services to potential customers. On the other hand, from the perspective of customers, utilizing hotel websites allow them to access hotel booking information and make purchase decisions anytime and anywhere.

To appraise a hotel website, usefulness plays the most important role among users. In particular, website functionality and usability are two important determinants of website usefulness. Website functionality refers to information provision (i.e. website contents and features), whereas website usability denotes information use and processing (i.e. design). Overall, a good hotel website should be informative and easy to use. In other words, an effective hotel website should assure that the content is accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date. In addition, a hotel website containing diversified types of content will enhance the richness of information.

A good hotel website should maintain its ease of use by assuring the easy accessibility of required information, making the appearance consistent, providing a good navigation system (e.g., provision of flow chart and site map), and enhancing the visual effects by integrating multimedia. In addition to providing basic hotel reservation information, quality of hotel websites can be enhanced by regularly updating functionality and usability to achieve customer relationship objective, such as integrating social networks, offering customized service, and providing loyalty programs. In summary, website content and design are regarded as important elements to appraise a hotel website. Embraced by the rapid development of information and communications technology, hotel practitioners may, and should, consider updating web technology regularly to improve their hotel websites, which will offer more convenience and personalized service to customers and potentially increase hotel revenue.