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Website adoption and performance by Iranian hotels
Tourism Management 46 (2015) 367e374
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Tourism Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman
Website adoption and performance by Iranian hotels Shahram Salavati*, Noor Hazarina Hashim Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
h i g h l i g h t s The size (star rating) of hotels has a positive correlate with the website adoption however the age has not. Website home page rank has a positive correlation with the website adoption and website age. Hotel characteristics (age and star rating) have a positive correlation with website age. Regardless of the research propose there is no relationship between number of updates and website age with website adoption.
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 10 November 2012 Accepted 29 July 2014 Available online
This study investigates the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. Using the content analysis technique, this study identifies 48 different features of the websites of 75 Iranian hotels. The findings show that Iranian hotels are at a very early stage of Internet adoption. The use of e-commerce is unlikely in the near future, as at present, none of the hotels offers online reservations. The results indicate that page ranking and the hotel star rating are significantly related to website performance. This investigation contributes to the limited research on e-commerce and hospitality in Iran. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: E-tourism Website evaluation Page rank Hotels Iran
1. Introduction The hotel industry has been significantly influenced in its operations by the advent of the internet. Indeed it has been described as a ‘lifeblood’ of tourism (Buhalis, 2003; Poon & Low, 2005). Tourism operators and businesses use the Internet to market their products and services and to communicate with customers (Law, Leung, & Wong, 2004; Maswera, Dawson, & Edwards, 2008; Park, 2000). The Internet has changed the entire value chain of tourism creation, marketing, distribution, and consumption (Gretzel, Yuan, & Fesenmaier, 2000; Minghetti & Buhalis, 2009). In 2012, there were 2.4 billion Internet users around the world (Internet World Stats, 2012a). In the Middle Eastern countries, the number of Internet users has dramatically increased, growing from 3.2 million in 2000 to 90 million in June 2012. However, despite this increase, the penetration of Internet users remains lower in the Middle East (40.2%) than in other regions around the world, such as
* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Salavati), [email protected] (N.H. Hashim). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2014.07.017 0261-5177/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
North America (78.6%), Europe (63.5%), and Oceania (67.8%) (Internet World Stats, 2012a). Among the 16 Middle Eastern countries, Iran has the highest number of Internet users, with 42 million, and ranks eighth in Internet penetration, at 53.3%. Nevertheless, the use of e-commerce in Iran, particularly in the tourism sector, has been disappointing. For instance, a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2008a) ranks Iran last among 69 developing countries with respect to the use of e-commerce. In the past decade, the Iranian government has begun to allocate greater attention to develop commerce activities among Iranian individuals and business organisations. For instance, an electronic visa is now available on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran (http://www.mfa.gov.ir/cms/ cms/Tehran/fa/evisa/) to facilitate the entrance of international tourists to Iran. Banks and universities were among the earliest institutions in Iran to have websites. However, the establishment of an online presence in the tourism sector has been slow. Searches through research databases indicate that tourism has been a focus of academic research in Iran for less than a decade. Most previous studies have focused on issues related to economics and community development (Honari, Goudarzi, Heidari, & Emami, 2010; Zamani-Farahani & Musa, 2008), tourism's effect on the
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environment (Azizi Jalilian, Danehkar, & Shaban Ali Fami, 2011), factors affecting travellers' choice of Iran as a destination (Moghimehfar & Nasr-Esfahani, 2011), tourists' attributes (Golmohammadi, Shams Ghareneh, Keramati, & Jahandideh, 2011), and tourism management (Zamani-Farahani & Henderson, 2010). The search found a recent article on the impact of ICT on tourism and the increasing demand from tourism organisations on better Internet infrastructure and support (Karimidizboni, 2013). This study adds to the limited literature on Iranian Internet use and may be the first study to investigate the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. In this study, adoption refers to the presence of a website, whereas performance relates to the existence of features on a hotel's website. In particular, this study attempts to answer the following questions: (a) What is the website adoption rate among Iranian hotels? (b) What is the level of the website features' presence among Iranian hotels? (c) Is website performance related to website age, page rank, or the number of website updates? (d) Is hotel age or star rating related to website performance, website age, or the number of website updates? This paper begins by providing background information regarding the role of the Internet and the tourism industry in Iran and then reviewing literature on common website evaluation features. It then presents the methodology and results of the study, and it closes by discussing these results and proposing a future research agenda. 2. Background 2.1. The Internet in Iran The Internet was introduced to Iran in 1993. Iran was the second Middle Eastern country (after Israel) to obtain access to the Internet (Telecommunication Company of Iran, 2010). At present, Iran is among the top-ranking countries with respect to the rate of growth of Internet access. The number of Iranians with access to the Internet has grown by more than 500% in the past five years. Iran also has the highest population of Internet users of any country in the Middle East and was ranked 14th out of the top 20 countries in the world in terms of Internet users (Internet World Stats, 2012c). The Iran Telecommunication Company (ITC) was established in 1971 and is responsible for administering all of the country's telecommunications needs (Telecommunication Company of Iran, 2010). In particular, the ITC is the exclusive provider of telecommunication infrastructure to all private and public entities in Iran. The company is solely responsible for all international gateways, IP capacities, and connectivity services in the country. The Internet is an urban phenomenon in Iran. 91% of Iranian Internet users reside in major cities, such as Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Mashhad (Iran Statistic Center, 2010). In Iran, 58% of Internet users are male, and the majority of Internet users in the country is between 10 and 29 years of age. Most Iranian Internet users are either students or professionals with higher education; 75.2% of Iranian Internet users can access the Internet at home, and 91.9% of these home-based Internet connections are dial-up connections. In general, information technology resources are slower in Iran than in other countries, and Internet speed is a critical factor that influences Internet usage. Among the 181 countries that were examined, Iran ranked 174th (0.58 Mbps) in terms of download speed and 170th (0.18 Mbps) in terms of upload speed. These speeds are far lower than the average Internet speed in either Asia as a whole (6.6 Mbps), which is led by South Korea (34.51 Mbps), or
other Middle Eastern countries, such as the United Arab Emirates (5.35 Mbps), Israel (4.83 Mbps), and Saudi Arabia (3.62 Mbps) (Internet World Stats, 2012b). 2.2. The tourism industry in Iran Iran is blessed with natural attractions and historical monuments that are scattered across various portions of the country, including the tourist cities of Shiraz, Isfahan, Hamedan, Tous of Mashhad, and Ardebil. The constant changes in Iran's political and economic situation in recent decades have tremendously influenced the Iranian tourism industry. Despite Iran's high level of internal security and low crime rate (Golmohammadi et al., 2011); it is a relatively unpopular tourist destination. This phenomenon is caused, in part, by continuing political tension between Iran and Western governments and negative impressions of Iran that are propagated by the media, including the depiction of Iran as a country that harbours Islamic extremism. In addition to political turmoil, strong travel warnings for visitors by Western governments discourage tourists from choosing Iran as a holiday destination. Dangers that are listed for tourists include banditry, drug trafficking, violent attacks, and kidnapping. Even in safe cities, tourists are warned of road accidents and reckless driving (Baum & O'Gorman, 2010). The Arab uprising in 2011 witnessed a significant drop of 10e40% in tourist arrivals to Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon. In contrast, Iran experienced an increase in the number of international tourists. In 2010, a total of 2.9 million tourist arrivals was recorded, followed by an increase of 3.3 million tourists by 2011 (UNWTO, 2013). The history of Iranian tourism is categorised into three important periods: prior to the Iranian revolution, during the IraneIraq War (which occurred between 1980 and 1988), and after the war. Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, the majority of visitors to Iran has been religious pilgrims and businesspersons. By contrast, a significant number of travellers visited Iran prior to the Iranian revolution (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008b). Tourism declined dramatically in Iran during the IraneIraq War. A few years after the conclusion of this war, the country attempted to reorganise its economy amidst efforts to rebuild from the damage caused by the war. Despite the presence of international tensions involving Iran, the Iranian government has continued to project a strong rise in visitor numbers and tourism revenue over the course of its forecast period, and it has discussed potential projects that would involve building 100 additional hotels in the nation (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008b). Although only 154,000 tourists visited Iran in 1990, tourist travel to Iran steadily increased during the 1990s, and 1.342 million tourists visited Iran in 2000. The Iranian tourism sector has more than doubled in size since 2000, and 2.735 million tourists visited Iran in 2006 (Iran Statistic Center, 2010). Increasing numbers tourists originate from the Islamic world or from other Asian locations (UNWTO, 2005). Approximately three-quarters of the tourists who entered Iran in 1999 came from Europe, although very few tourists visited Iran from non-European Western nations. 2.3. Website evaluation studies A website's overall performance can be attributed to its features and elements (Musante, Bojanic, & Zhang, 2009). Despite many attempts to develop a comprehensive website evaluation technique, there is no universally accepted approach or standard for evaluating websites (Chiou, Lin, & Perng, 2011; Morrison, Taylor, & Douglas, 2004; Tsai, Chou, & Lai, 2010). Evaluation considerations differ depending on the nature and requirements of the businesses. Website evaluation measures and analyzes the effectiveness and
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the performance of a certain website through the given features. Researchers propose diverse approaches to evaluate websites based on the design and usability (Lavie & Tractinsky, 2004), quality (Bai, €rk, 2010), and customer acceptance Law, & Wen, 2008), content (Bjo and satisfaction (Kim, Chung, & Lee, 2010). Chiou et al. (2011) reviewed 83 articles related to the website evaluation from 23 journals. The study identified three approaches commonly used to evaluate websites; information system (IS), marketing and combined approaches. The IS approach, particularly, considers technological factors in evaluating websites, such as usability, accessibility, navigability, or information quality. In contrast, the marketing approach employs over 75% of the marketing related factors to evaluate websites, such as advertising, promotion, online transaction, order confirmation, or customer service. In the combined approach, researchers have used a combination of IS and marketing factors. The review found that website evaluation approaches are changing from the IS to the marketing or a combination approach in the recent years. Similarly, studies that address website evaluation can be classified as either empirical or theoretical research. Theoretical studies develop or modify concepts or approaches (Robbins & Stylianou, 2003; Tong, Duffy, Cross, Tsung, & Yen, 2005), whereas empirical studies validate or verify hypotheses or approaches through experimental investigations (Au Yeung & Law, 2006). In addition, empirical studies may be conducted either with or without user involvement (Lin, Zhou, & Guo, 2009; Tsai et al., 2010). Most of the website evaluation studies that do not require user involvement used the content analysis to assess websites (Horng & Tsai, 2010), whereas studies with user involvement use (a) experts, managers, or employees (Chung & Law, 2003; Teo & Pian, 2004); (b) customers/travellers (Cheung & Law, 2009; Law & Cheung, 2006; Tang, Jang, & Morrison, 2012); or (c) a combination of (a) and (b) (Lee & Kozar, 2006; Yeung & Law, 2004). In order to evaluate websites, scholars have introduced and employed different methods and instruments (Law, Qi, & Buhalis, 2010) such as counting, user judgment, automated, or a combination method. Among these methods, counting because of its advantages (describe briefly the advantages) is the most popular website evaluation method. In the counting method, a researcher counts the number of features present in website against a checklist. The main advantages of this method are its simplicity in collecting data and minimising error, and the ease of analysis. However, designing an evaluation checklist with comprehensive features could be a critical shortcoming of this method. Finally, there is no universal classification of website features. For instance, several studies have considered the feature of contact details to be an aspect of the company information category (Musante et al., 2009), whereas other studies considered this feature as part of the contact information (Law & Hsu, 2005) or CRM (Maswera et al., 2008) categories.
Google's PR reflects Google's view of the importance of webpages by considering more than 500 million variables and two billion searches. Pages that are regarded as important receive a high PR rating and appear at the top of Google (2013) search results. Google PR also provides hints about the popularity of a webpage (Safronov & Parashar, 2003). Popular websites have a high PR of 10, whereas the least-visited websites have a PR of zero. The PR score is provided by two well-known Google tools: the PR toolbar and the PR checker. These two tools produce similar results. The PR toolbar can be easily installed on the Google Chrome browser. This tool provides not only the PR but also the Alexa Traffic Rank, IP, location, and other valuable information for each website of interest. Similarly, the PR checker (http://www.prchecker.info/) can be used to determine a webpage's rank. Another tool that can help to evaluate websites is the Wayback Machine (WM). Since 1996, the WM has stored an enormous collection of websites, moving images, text, and audio (Scaglione, Schegg, & Murphy, 2009). The WM from the Internet Archive (archive.org), provides information regarding the date that a site was created, reveals the number of updates to the site, and links to archived versions of the site in question (Murphy, Hashim, & O'Connor, 2007). Thus, by typing the URL of a website into the address box on the WM home page, a user can view the webpage as it existed at a particular point in time, examine the evolution of the page through time, and determine the changes that have been made to a page (Hackett & Parmanto, 2005). This study uses the Google PR to determine the PR of hotel websites and the WM to assess the age and update status of these websites.
2.4. Page rank and website age reflect evolving website use
4. Methodology
Modern search engines utilise a large number of factors, including content and page quality features, to rank the search results that they present (Agichtein, Brill, & Dumais, 2006). Google's PageRank (PR) orders webpages using an information retrieval algorithm that is available through the Google Toolbar (Thelwall, 2003). PR uses the link details in a set of pages to assess which pages are referenced most frequently by other websites, thereby determining the pages that are most important relative to the examined set (Safronov & Parashar, 2003). Google's PR algorithm assigns an importance ranking to each known webpage. This information is subsequently used by search engines to determine relevant and important matches for a user's query (Higham, 2005).
The population of this study included 925 hotels that are registered with the Iranian hotel directory (www.hoteldari.com). This directory did not provide the URLs for hotel websites; however, 111 hotel URLs were obtained by entering the hotel names into the Google and Yahoo! search engines. Visits to these 111 URLs revealed only 75 were functional; 5 websites were under construction, 7 websites were unavailable, and 24 hotels shared a website. These 36 sites were excluded from the study. This study evaluates the Internet activities of Iranian hotels in two ways. First, it employs the web content analysis technique to evaluate the presence of features on the 75 Iranian hotel websites to determine their performance. It then assesses the relationships
3. Hypothesis development To investigate the relationships among hotel traits, website characteristics, and website performance, the following hypotheses are proposed: H1: There is a relationship between a hotel's (a) age and (b) star rating and its (c) website age. H2: There is a relationship between a hotel's (a) age and (b) star rating and (c) the number of updates to its website. H3: There is a relationship between a hotel's (a) age and (b) star rating and its (c) website performance. H4: There is a relationship between website age and website performance. H5: There is a relationship between the number of updates to a website and the website's performance. H6: There is a relationship between a website's PR rating and its performance. H7: There is a relationship between a website's (a) age and (b) number of updates and its (c) PR rating (Figure 1).
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Fig. 1. Research model.
among the following features of the evaluated hotels: website performance; hotel characteristics, such as age and ratings; and website factors, such as age and the number of updates. Table 2 presents the website features that are included in this study. These features were adapted from a previously published investigation by Maswera et al. (2008). Because the clarity of coding units is an essential consideration in content analysis, a pre-test was used to develop familiarity with the website content items and to ensure that the coding units were clear and mutually exclusive. During the pre-test, a total of five hotel websites, representing two five-star hotels, two four-star hotels, and one three-star hotel was content analysed by two coders. The pre-test produced 92% agreement between the two coders. The pre-test also led to two changes in the analytical process, namely, the addition of another coding unit, multilingual site, and the removal of the immigration procedures consideration from the analysis. The final list of coding units included 48 units in the following six categories: hotel information, product information, value-added information, customer relationship management, reservation, and payment. Data were gathered from different sources. Hotel age and star rating were gathered from the HotelDari directory (hoteldari.net), the age and number of updates of each examined website were determined using the WM site (www.archive.org), and page ranks were obtained using the PR Checker (prchecker.info), a site that provides the free service for Google PR rating. Keying the URLs of the 75 examined hotel websites into the WM generated 55 website ages and 44 updates for these websites. Three separate rounds of entering URLs into the WM were performed to ensure the reliability of the data. Entering the 75 hotels' URLs on the PR Checker website generated the page rank for 73 hotel homepages. Similar to the procedures that were employed with respect to website age, the page rank information was entered on three separate occasions to verify the information that was collected. This information was also validated through the use of the Google PR toolbar, which produced results identical to the PR Checker. 5. Results 5.1. Website adoption Table 1 presents the percentage of website adoption of Iranian hotels in terms of their star ratings. Of the 75 working hotel websites, 68 hotels host their websites in the global .com domain, and the remaining seven hotels host their websites in Iran's country domain, .ir. As shown in Table 1, higher levels of website adoption are generally observed for higher-rated hotels than for lower-rated
hotels, although the KruskaleWallis test indicates that no significant difference (p > 0.05) in website adoption across hotels of various ratings. 5.2. Website performance The website that includes the most features is a five-star hotel; this website includes 16 out of the 48 items (33%) that were examined. The second highest number of features was found on the website of a four-star hotel, which includes 14 of the examined items (29%). Table 2 presents the percentage of the hotel websites that include each of the 48 website features that were examined. These features are classified under the six dimensions of hotel information, product information, non-product information, payment, customer relationship management, and reservation. Almost all of the examined hotel websites (>80%) provide contact details, an e-mail address, and an overview of the hotel in question, and 72% of the hotels provide a room description. Half of the hotel websites include rate information, a multilingual site, a photo gallery, and the option to make a reservation through e-mail. Value-added information, such as news, customer surveys, directions, and promotional details regarding destinations of interest, is available on 35% of the examined websites. Less than 10% of the websites provide travel-related information, such as customs regulations, local transportation options, weather reports, methods of altering or tracking reservations, and cancellation policies. Finally, none of the examined sites provide an online payment feature, although 48% of the hotels provide an e-mail reservation option. Table 3 presents the ANOVA results and the percentage of website feature presence across the categories. As illustrated in Table 3, the most popular category among Iranian hotel websites is product information with 29.1% feature presences, followed by CRM (20.2%) and hotel information (18.4%). Out of the six categories, only product information (p-value ¼ 0.049) shows significance difference across the star rating. Similar to other hotel Table 1 Website adoption by Iranian hotels. Star ratings (higher the better)
n
One Two Three Four Five Total
430 266 140 65 24 925
Website
KruskaleWallis
n (%) Yes
No
6 15 22 18 14 75
424 251 118 47 10 850
(1) (6) (16) (28) (58) (8)
(99) (94) (84) (72) (42) (92)
Chi-square
p-value
4.000
0.406
S. Salavati, N.H. Hashim / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 367e374 Table 2 Website features presence (n ¼ 75). Feature Percentage 1. Hotel information News 31 CEO message 4 Hotel overview 83 Financial reports 0 Employment opportunities 3 Investor and community relations 0 2.Product information FAQs 7 Rates/fares 56 Virtual tours 11 Photo gallery 59 Room description 72 Privacy and security 0 Interactivity-winnowing 0 3. Non-product information Security 0 Customs 1 Weather/climate 12 How to get there 29 Other places to see/visit 35 Local transport information 5 Other e any unique content 0 4. Payment Debit cards 0 Credit cards 0 Electronic cash 0 Virtual credit cards 0 Currency converter 0 5. Customer Relationship Management Feedback 0 E-newsletter 0 Mailing lists 0 Contact details 92 E-mail address 80 Free downloads 4 Loyalty systems 0 Reciprocal links 0 Customer surveys 28 Call-back services 0 Customer profiling 5 Customised content 0 Mail-to-friend button 0 Competition and games 1 Content in other languages 53 Promotions and special offers 0 6. Reservation Cancellation policy 7 Checking availability 1 Tracking reservations 0 Cancelling reservations 0 Amending reservations 0 Making e-mail reservations 48 Creating customer accounts 0
websites studies, the five-star hotels had the highest future presence compared to the ratings. 5.3. Hypothesis testing Table 4 presents the analysis result for website age, number of updates, and page rank. The results indicate that the average website age is 2070 days, or approximately five and a half years. The first Iranian hotel website was created by a four-star hotel in 1999, and in 2000, a five-star hotel became the next hotel to establish a website. A three-star hotel was the newest hotel to start a website, on March 16, 2011.1
1
Data collection completed on August 25, 2011.
371
The minimum and maximum number of updates belongs to two four-star hotels, which have been updated one time and 144 times. On average, the examined hotel websites have each been updated 30.7 times, and the highest and the lowest ranks are five and zero, respectively. Fifty percent of the hotel websites have been updated less than 17 times since they were created. The average page rank of the homepages of the examined websites is 1.89 out of 10. The Pearson correlations test in Fig. 2 shows no significant association between website adoption and various factors, including website age (r ¼ 0.074, p ¼ 0.593), number of website updates (r ¼ 0.060, p ¼ 0.697), and hotel age (r ¼ 0.001, p ¼ 0.993). Similarly, correlation result indicates that there is no significant relation between hotel age (r ¼ 0.060, p ¼ 0.733) and the number of updates to the hotel's website. However, the test indicates that there is a significant relationship between website and hotel age (r ¼ 0.333, n ¼ 58, p ¼ 0.031). In addition, Spearman correlation tests reveal that significant correlations exist not only between website adoption and the PR rating (r ¼ 0.320, p ¼ 0.006) but also between website adoption and the hotel star rating (r ¼ 0.273, n ¼ 75, p ¼ 0.040). There is also a significant relationship between the websites' ages and their PR ratings (r ¼ 0.397, p ¼ 0.025) and between the websites' ages and their star ratings (r ¼ 0.296, p ¼ 0.029). However, no significant relationship exists between the number of updates to hotel websites and either their PR ratings (r ¼ 0.172, p ¼ 0.375) or the star ratings of their corresponding hotels (r ¼ 0.087, p ¼ 0.575). 6. Discussion and conclusion 6.1. Summary of findings The main objective of this study was to investigate the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. In addition to investigating the adoption rate and age of the websites, this study investigated the performance of the websites based on the presence of website features, page rank, and number of updates. To our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. Although the results show no significant difference in the website adoption rate across star ratings, the findings were similar to previous hotel website adoption studies (Hashim, Murphy, Purchase, & O'Connor, 2010; Murphy et al., 2007), which found that high-rated Iranian hotels created websites earlier than lowrated hotels. An 8% adoption rate indicates that website adoption remains at a very early stage in Iran, implying that vast opportunities exist for Iranian hotels to adopt websites. This study found a weak and negative relationship between website adoption and the number of updates to a website. This study found that 50% of the hotel websites had been updated less than 17 times since they were created, and the average page rank of the homepages of the examined websites was 1.89 out of 10. The bandwagon effect explains this phenomenon of early adoption and poor implementation (McBride, 1997). These early website adopters may have created websites to follow current trends, but they may not have understood the benefits and objectives of having a website. By contrast, the younger hotels appear to have leapfrogged older hotels in terms of website use (Ismail, Hashim, Schegg, & Murphy, 2009), and these younger hotels demonstrated superior website implementation. In addition, this study found that 91% of the examined Iranian hotels (68 out of 75) used the global .com domain to host their websites, whereas only seven hotels used the Iran-specific country domain of .ir to host their websites. Research on domain names recommends using branded domains, including country domains, to assist buyers and increase familiarity and confidence (Hashim &
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Table 3 ANOVA analysis and the percentage of each category. Features (category)
Five-star (n ¼ 14)
Four-star (n ¼ 18)
Three-star (n ¼ 22)
Two-star (n ¼ 15)
One-star (n ¼ 6)
Ave. (n ¼ 75)
F value
p-value
Hotel information Product information Non-product information CRM Reservation Payment
26.2a 38.8 14.3 19.6 10.2 0.0
19.4 31.7 11.9 20.1 8.7 0.0
18.2 25.3 9.7 16.8 4.5 0.0
17.8 25.7 14.3 19.2 7.6 0.0
22.2 21.4 7.1 14.6 11.9 0.0
20.2a 29.1 11.8 18.4 7.8 e
1.407 2.276 0.462 1.236 1.213 e
0.241 0.049b 0.763 0.304 0.313 e
a b
Percentage. p < 0.05.
Murphy, 2007). This result may have been observed for several reasons. First, the administration of the .ir domain is under government control that involves bureaucratic procedures, such as long processes and multiple types of documentation, to obtain and maintain a website in this domain. These bureaucratic procedures demotivate and hinder businesses from adopting this domain name. Second, there is a higher acquisition cost for an .ir website than for a .com website. An .ir domain name could cost USD 25 (IraNIC, 2013) compared to a .com, which may be as cheap as USD 12 per year (Network Solutions, 2013). Finally, this result may reflect the popular belief that the .com domain is more popular than other domains and that it may thus provide a more effective channel than the .ir domain for promoting a business (Mueller, 1998). The content analysis of each website found that existing hotels use websites primarily to introduce their business. E-commerce activities are minimal among Iranian hotels; in fact, none of the hotels in this study provided online reservations, and only half of the 75 evaluated websites provide a multilingual option. The construction of websites that provide information in other languages, such as English and Arabic, can help tourists who are unfamiliar with Iran find required information. As the importance of the Internet as a tool for gathering information and making travel decisions continues to grow (Hudson & Thal, 2013; Jordan, Norman, & Table 4 Website and hotel characteristics. Rating
n
First Website Ave. websites Ave. Webpage Websites updates created age (day) Rank (1e10) n ¼ 44a n ¼ 55a n ¼ 73a Ave. Max Min
One-star Two-star Three-star Four-star Five-star Mean
6 15 22 18 14 75
Mar 18, 2004 Feb 03, 2004 Apr 01, 2001 Oct 02, 1999 May 24, 2000 e
a
Available samples
1276 1567 2252 1964 2580 2070
0.83 1.00 1.45 2.11 3.77 1.89
5.33 38.00 33.92 29.77 32.27 30.70
3 4 3 1 2 e
8 67 66 144 99 e
Vogt, 2013), Internet marketing will become increasingly vital to tourism (Hung & Law, 2011), particularly given the recent surge in tourism in Iran. Both website adoption and proper website implementation are critical to the success of Internet marketing. 6.2. Managerial implications Out of 925 hotels registered with the Hoteldari.com directory, 92% of these hotels lack an online presence. This finding suggests a huge opportunity for Internet adoption and penetration by Iranian hotels. The alarming non adoption rate found in this study should alert hoteliers, the Iranian government, and related ministries and agencies of the potential to improve Internet use by Iranian hotels. As the Internet becomes essential for operational and strategic purposes (Bai et al., 2008; Nasution & Mavondo, 2008), hotels without the Internet face competitive disadvantages. However, to ensure that hotels benefit from the technology, the decision to adopt Internet use necessitates both long- and short-term planning. It seems time for the early adopter hotels to re-evaluate and revise their objectives for going online. Since their first Internet adoption 15 years ago, the five- and four-star hotels seem to have little sense of direction for their online presence. The management of these hotels should consider outsourcing aspects of website management to provide ideas and recommendations for good website design since the aesthetic appeal of a hotel website is positively related to booking decisions (Phelan, Christodoulidou, Countryman, & Kistner, 2011), and should consistently monitor and update their hotel websites. This study has several shortcomings. The website features that were considered in this study may not be the comprehensive. Future studies could add website feature considerations, such as social networking and mobile options. In addition, future research initiatives could extend the current study by investigating Iranian opinions on the usability of hotel websites. Finally, future investigations could extend the current study by examining the use of e-mail by Iranian hotels.
Fig. 2. Correlations between factors.
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(2005). 10/09/2010 World Tourism Organization. Retrieved from http://www.world-tourism.org/facts/ menu.html. United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). (2013). Tourism highlights, 2013 edition. Retrieved August 1, 2013, from http://mkt.unwto.org/en/ publication/unwto-tourism-highlights-2013-edition. Yeung, A. T., & Law, R. (2004). Extending the modified heuristic usability evaluation technique to chain and independent hotel websites. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 23(3), 307e313. Zamani-Farahani, H., & Henderson, J. C. (2010). Islamic tourism and managing tourism development in Islamic societies: the cases of Iran and Saudi Arabia. International Journal of Tourism Research, 12(1), 79e89. Zamani-Farahani, H., & Musa, G. (2008). Residents' attitudes and perception towards tourism development: a case study of Masooleh, Iran. Tourism Management, 29(6), 1233e1236.
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S. Salavati, N.H. Hashim / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 367e374 Shahram Salavati is a senior lecturer in the department of Business Administration at the Islamic Azad University e Tonekabon Branch, Iran. He is also a PhD candidate of Management in the Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). His research interests include Internet Marketing, electronic commerce, tourism, and electronic tourism.
Noor Hazarina Hashim is a Senior Lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. She teaches E-Marketing, E-Business and other marketing courses to both graduate and undergraduate students. Dr Hazarina earned her PhD from The University of Western Australia, and her research and consultation interests include effective Internet use in organisations, application of Internet in tourism industry and destination marketing. Her passion is teaching, and she believes that learning goes beyond the classroom. Her publications have appeared in Tourism Management, Journal of Computer Mediated Communications, International Journal of Hospitality Management and Journal of Information Technology and Tourism.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Tourism Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman
Website adoption and performance by Iranian hotels Shahram Salavati*, Noor Hazarina Hashim Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Skudai, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
h i g h l i g h t s The size (star rating) of hotels has a positive correlate with the website adoption however the age has not. Website home page rank has a positive correlation with the website adoption and website age. Hotel characteristics (age and star rating) have a positive correlation with website age. Regardless of the research propose there is no relationship between number of updates and website age with website adoption.
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history: Received 10 November 2012 Accepted 29 July 2014 Available online
This study investigates the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. Using the content analysis technique, this study identifies 48 different features of the websites of 75 Iranian hotels. The findings show that Iranian hotels are at a very early stage of Internet adoption. The use of e-commerce is unlikely in the near future, as at present, none of the hotels offers online reservations. The results indicate that page ranking and the hotel star rating are significantly related to website performance. This investigation contributes to the limited research on e-commerce and hospitality in Iran. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: E-tourism Website evaluation Page rank Hotels Iran
1. Introduction The hotel industry has been significantly influenced in its operations by the advent of the internet. Indeed it has been described as a ‘lifeblood’ of tourism (Buhalis, 2003; Poon & Low, 2005). Tourism operators and businesses use the Internet to market their products and services and to communicate with customers (Law, Leung, & Wong, 2004; Maswera, Dawson, & Edwards, 2008; Park, 2000). The Internet has changed the entire value chain of tourism creation, marketing, distribution, and consumption (Gretzel, Yuan, & Fesenmaier, 2000; Minghetti & Buhalis, 2009). In 2012, there were 2.4 billion Internet users around the world (Internet World Stats, 2012a). In the Middle Eastern countries, the number of Internet users has dramatically increased, growing from 3.2 million in 2000 to 90 million in June 2012. However, despite this increase, the penetration of Internet users remains lower in the Middle East (40.2%) than in other regions around the world, such as
* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Salavati), [email protected] (N.H. Hashim). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2014.07.017 0261-5177/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
North America (78.6%), Europe (63.5%), and Oceania (67.8%) (Internet World Stats, 2012a). Among the 16 Middle Eastern countries, Iran has the highest number of Internet users, with 42 million, and ranks eighth in Internet penetration, at 53.3%. Nevertheless, the use of e-commerce in Iran, particularly in the tourism sector, has been disappointing. For instance, a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (2008a) ranks Iran last among 69 developing countries with respect to the use of e-commerce. In the past decade, the Iranian government has begun to allocate greater attention to develop commerce activities among Iranian individuals and business organisations. For instance, an electronic visa is now available on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran (http://www.mfa.gov.ir/cms/ cms/Tehran/fa/evisa/) to facilitate the entrance of international tourists to Iran. Banks and universities were among the earliest institutions in Iran to have websites. However, the establishment of an online presence in the tourism sector has been slow. Searches through research databases indicate that tourism has been a focus of academic research in Iran for less than a decade. Most previous studies have focused on issues related to economics and community development (Honari, Goudarzi, Heidari, & Emami, 2010; Zamani-Farahani & Musa, 2008), tourism's effect on the
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environment (Azizi Jalilian, Danehkar, & Shaban Ali Fami, 2011), factors affecting travellers' choice of Iran as a destination (Moghimehfar & Nasr-Esfahani, 2011), tourists' attributes (Golmohammadi, Shams Ghareneh, Keramati, & Jahandideh, 2011), and tourism management (Zamani-Farahani & Henderson, 2010). The search found a recent article on the impact of ICT on tourism and the increasing demand from tourism organisations on better Internet infrastructure and support (Karimidizboni, 2013). This study adds to the limited literature on Iranian Internet use and may be the first study to investigate the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. In this study, adoption refers to the presence of a website, whereas performance relates to the existence of features on a hotel's website. In particular, this study attempts to answer the following questions: (a) What is the website adoption rate among Iranian hotels? (b) What is the level of the website features' presence among Iranian hotels? (c) Is website performance related to website age, page rank, or the number of website updates? (d) Is hotel age or star rating related to website performance, website age, or the number of website updates? This paper begins by providing background information regarding the role of the Internet and the tourism industry in Iran and then reviewing literature on common website evaluation features. It then presents the methodology and results of the study, and it closes by discussing these results and proposing a future research agenda. 2. Background 2.1. The Internet in Iran The Internet was introduced to Iran in 1993. Iran was the second Middle Eastern country (after Israel) to obtain access to the Internet (Telecommunication Company of Iran, 2010). At present, Iran is among the top-ranking countries with respect to the rate of growth of Internet access. The number of Iranians with access to the Internet has grown by more than 500% in the past five years. Iran also has the highest population of Internet users of any country in the Middle East and was ranked 14th out of the top 20 countries in the world in terms of Internet users (Internet World Stats, 2012c). The Iran Telecommunication Company (ITC) was established in 1971 and is responsible for administering all of the country's telecommunications needs (Telecommunication Company of Iran, 2010). In particular, the ITC is the exclusive provider of telecommunication infrastructure to all private and public entities in Iran. The company is solely responsible for all international gateways, IP capacities, and connectivity services in the country. The Internet is an urban phenomenon in Iran. 91% of Iranian Internet users reside in major cities, such as Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Mashhad (Iran Statistic Center, 2010). In Iran, 58% of Internet users are male, and the majority of Internet users in the country is between 10 and 29 years of age. Most Iranian Internet users are either students or professionals with higher education; 75.2% of Iranian Internet users can access the Internet at home, and 91.9% of these home-based Internet connections are dial-up connections. In general, information technology resources are slower in Iran than in other countries, and Internet speed is a critical factor that influences Internet usage. Among the 181 countries that were examined, Iran ranked 174th (0.58 Mbps) in terms of download speed and 170th (0.18 Mbps) in terms of upload speed. These speeds are far lower than the average Internet speed in either Asia as a whole (6.6 Mbps), which is led by South Korea (34.51 Mbps), or
other Middle Eastern countries, such as the United Arab Emirates (5.35 Mbps), Israel (4.83 Mbps), and Saudi Arabia (3.62 Mbps) (Internet World Stats, 2012b). 2.2. The tourism industry in Iran Iran is blessed with natural attractions and historical monuments that are scattered across various portions of the country, including the tourist cities of Shiraz, Isfahan, Hamedan, Tous of Mashhad, and Ardebil. The constant changes in Iran's political and economic situation in recent decades have tremendously influenced the Iranian tourism industry. Despite Iran's high level of internal security and low crime rate (Golmohammadi et al., 2011); it is a relatively unpopular tourist destination. This phenomenon is caused, in part, by continuing political tension between Iran and Western governments and negative impressions of Iran that are propagated by the media, including the depiction of Iran as a country that harbours Islamic extremism. In addition to political turmoil, strong travel warnings for visitors by Western governments discourage tourists from choosing Iran as a holiday destination. Dangers that are listed for tourists include banditry, drug trafficking, violent attacks, and kidnapping. Even in safe cities, tourists are warned of road accidents and reckless driving (Baum & O'Gorman, 2010). The Arab uprising in 2011 witnessed a significant drop of 10e40% in tourist arrivals to Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon. In contrast, Iran experienced an increase in the number of international tourists. In 2010, a total of 2.9 million tourist arrivals was recorded, followed by an increase of 3.3 million tourists by 2011 (UNWTO, 2013). The history of Iranian tourism is categorised into three important periods: prior to the Iranian revolution, during the IraneIraq War (which occurred between 1980 and 1988), and after the war. Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, the majority of visitors to Iran has been religious pilgrims and businesspersons. By contrast, a significant number of travellers visited Iran prior to the Iranian revolution (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008b). Tourism declined dramatically in Iran during the IraneIraq War. A few years after the conclusion of this war, the country attempted to reorganise its economy amidst efforts to rebuild from the damage caused by the war. Despite the presence of international tensions involving Iran, the Iranian government has continued to project a strong rise in visitor numbers and tourism revenue over the course of its forecast period, and it has discussed potential projects that would involve building 100 additional hotels in the nation (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008b). Although only 154,000 tourists visited Iran in 1990, tourist travel to Iran steadily increased during the 1990s, and 1.342 million tourists visited Iran in 2000. The Iranian tourism sector has more than doubled in size since 2000, and 2.735 million tourists visited Iran in 2006 (Iran Statistic Center, 2010). Increasing numbers tourists originate from the Islamic world or from other Asian locations (UNWTO, 2005). Approximately three-quarters of the tourists who entered Iran in 1999 came from Europe, although very few tourists visited Iran from non-European Western nations. 2.3. Website evaluation studies A website's overall performance can be attributed to its features and elements (Musante, Bojanic, & Zhang, 2009). Despite many attempts to develop a comprehensive website evaluation technique, there is no universally accepted approach or standard for evaluating websites (Chiou, Lin, & Perng, 2011; Morrison, Taylor, & Douglas, 2004; Tsai, Chou, & Lai, 2010). Evaluation considerations differ depending on the nature and requirements of the businesses. Website evaluation measures and analyzes the effectiveness and
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the performance of a certain website through the given features. Researchers propose diverse approaches to evaluate websites based on the design and usability (Lavie & Tractinsky, 2004), quality (Bai, €rk, 2010), and customer acceptance Law, & Wen, 2008), content (Bjo and satisfaction (Kim, Chung, & Lee, 2010). Chiou et al. (2011) reviewed 83 articles related to the website evaluation from 23 journals. The study identified three approaches commonly used to evaluate websites; information system (IS), marketing and combined approaches. The IS approach, particularly, considers technological factors in evaluating websites, such as usability, accessibility, navigability, or information quality. In contrast, the marketing approach employs over 75% of the marketing related factors to evaluate websites, such as advertising, promotion, online transaction, order confirmation, or customer service. In the combined approach, researchers have used a combination of IS and marketing factors. The review found that website evaluation approaches are changing from the IS to the marketing or a combination approach in the recent years. Similarly, studies that address website evaluation can be classified as either empirical or theoretical research. Theoretical studies develop or modify concepts or approaches (Robbins & Stylianou, 2003; Tong, Duffy, Cross, Tsung, & Yen, 2005), whereas empirical studies validate or verify hypotheses or approaches through experimental investigations (Au Yeung & Law, 2006). In addition, empirical studies may be conducted either with or without user involvement (Lin, Zhou, & Guo, 2009; Tsai et al., 2010). Most of the website evaluation studies that do not require user involvement used the content analysis to assess websites (Horng & Tsai, 2010), whereas studies with user involvement use (a) experts, managers, or employees (Chung & Law, 2003; Teo & Pian, 2004); (b) customers/travellers (Cheung & Law, 2009; Law & Cheung, 2006; Tang, Jang, & Morrison, 2012); or (c) a combination of (a) and (b) (Lee & Kozar, 2006; Yeung & Law, 2004). In order to evaluate websites, scholars have introduced and employed different methods and instruments (Law, Qi, & Buhalis, 2010) such as counting, user judgment, automated, or a combination method. Among these methods, counting because of its advantages (describe briefly the advantages) is the most popular website evaluation method. In the counting method, a researcher counts the number of features present in website against a checklist. The main advantages of this method are its simplicity in collecting data and minimising error, and the ease of analysis. However, designing an evaluation checklist with comprehensive features could be a critical shortcoming of this method. Finally, there is no universal classification of website features. For instance, several studies have considered the feature of contact details to be an aspect of the company information category (Musante et al., 2009), whereas other studies considered this feature as part of the contact information (Law & Hsu, 2005) or CRM (Maswera et al., 2008) categories.
Google's PR reflects Google's view of the importance of webpages by considering more than 500 million variables and two billion searches. Pages that are regarded as important receive a high PR rating and appear at the top of Google (2013) search results. Google PR also provides hints about the popularity of a webpage (Safronov & Parashar, 2003). Popular websites have a high PR of 10, whereas the least-visited websites have a PR of zero. The PR score is provided by two well-known Google tools: the PR toolbar and the PR checker. These two tools produce similar results. The PR toolbar can be easily installed on the Google Chrome browser. This tool provides not only the PR but also the Alexa Traffic Rank, IP, location, and other valuable information for each website of interest. Similarly, the PR checker (http://www.prchecker.info/) can be used to determine a webpage's rank. Another tool that can help to evaluate websites is the Wayback Machine (WM). Since 1996, the WM has stored an enormous collection of websites, moving images, text, and audio (Scaglione, Schegg, & Murphy, 2009). The WM from the Internet Archive (archive.org), provides information regarding the date that a site was created, reveals the number of updates to the site, and links to archived versions of the site in question (Murphy, Hashim, & O'Connor, 2007). Thus, by typing the URL of a website into the address box on the WM home page, a user can view the webpage as it existed at a particular point in time, examine the evolution of the page through time, and determine the changes that have been made to a page (Hackett & Parmanto, 2005). This study uses the Google PR to determine the PR of hotel websites and the WM to assess the age and update status of these websites.
2.4. Page rank and website age reflect evolving website use
4. Methodology
Modern search engines utilise a large number of factors, including content and page quality features, to rank the search results that they present (Agichtein, Brill, & Dumais, 2006). Google's PageRank (PR) orders webpages using an information retrieval algorithm that is available through the Google Toolbar (Thelwall, 2003). PR uses the link details in a set of pages to assess which pages are referenced most frequently by other websites, thereby determining the pages that are most important relative to the examined set (Safronov & Parashar, 2003). Google's PR algorithm assigns an importance ranking to each known webpage. This information is subsequently used by search engines to determine relevant and important matches for a user's query (Higham, 2005).
The population of this study included 925 hotels that are registered with the Iranian hotel directory (www.hoteldari.com). This directory did not provide the URLs for hotel websites; however, 111 hotel URLs were obtained by entering the hotel names into the Google and Yahoo! search engines. Visits to these 111 URLs revealed only 75 were functional; 5 websites were under construction, 7 websites were unavailable, and 24 hotels shared a website. These 36 sites were excluded from the study. This study evaluates the Internet activities of Iranian hotels in two ways. First, it employs the web content analysis technique to evaluate the presence of features on the 75 Iranian hotel websites to determine their performance. It then assesses the relationships
3. Hypothesis development To investigate the relationships among hotel traits, website characteristics, and website performance, the following hypotheses are proposed: H1: There is a relationship between a hotel's (a) age and (b) star rating and its (c) website age. H2: There is a relationship between a hotel's (a) age and (b) star rating and (c) the number of updates to its website. H3: There is a relationship between a hotel's (a) age and (b) star rating and its (c) website performance. H4: There is a relationship between website age and website performance. H5: There is a relationship between the number of updates to a website and the website's performance. H6: There is a relationship between a website's PR rating and its performance. H7: There is a relationship between a website's (a) age and (b) number of updates and its (c) PR rating (Figure 1).
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Fig. 1. Research model.
among the following features of the evaluated hotels: website performance; hotel characteristics, such as age and ratings; and website factors, such as age and the number of updates. Table 2 presents the website features that are included in this study. These features were adapted from a previously published investigation by Maswera et al. (2008). Because the clarity of coding units is an essential consideration in content analysis, a pre-test was used to develop familiarity with the website content items and to ensure that the coding units were clear and mutually exclusive. During the pre-test, a total of five hotel websites, representing two five-star hotels, two four-star hotels, and one three-star hotel was content analysed by two coders. The pre-test produced 92% agreement between the two coders. The pre-test also led to two changes in the analytical process, namely, the addition of another coding unit, multilingual site, and the removal of the immigration procedures consideration from the analysis. The final list of coding units included 48 units in the following six categories: hotel information, product information, value-added information, customer relationship management, reservation, and payment. Data were gathered from different sources. Hotel age and star rating were gathered from the HotelDari directory (hoteldari.net), the age and number of updates of each examined website were determined using the WM site (www.archive.org), and page ranks were obtained using the PR Checker (prchecker.info), a site that provides the free service for Google PR rating. Keying the URLs of the 75 examined hotel websites into the WM generated 55 website ages and 44 updates for these websites. Three separate rounds of entering URLs into the WM were performed to ensure the reliability of the data. Entering the 75 hotels' URLs on the PR Checker website generated the page rank for 73 hotel homepages. Similar to the procedures that were employed with respect to website age, the page rank information was entered on three separate occasions to verify the information that was collected. This information was also validated through the use of the Google PR toolbar, which produced results identical to the PR Checker. 5. Results 5.1. Website adoption Table 1 presents the percentage of website adoption of Iranian hotels in terms of their star ratings. Of the 75 working hotel websites, 68 hotels host their websites in the global .com domain, and the remaining seven hotels host their websites in Iran's country domain, .ir. As shown in Table 1, higher levels of website adoption are generally observed for higher-rated hotels than for lower-rated
hotels, although the KruskaleWallis test indicates that no significant difference (p > 0.05) in website adoption across hotels of various ratings. 5.2. Website performance The website that includes the most features is a five-star hotel; this website includes 16 out of the 48 items (33%) that were examined. The second highest number of features was found on the website of a four-star hotel, which includes 14 of the examined items (29%). Table 2 presents the percentage of the hotel websites that include each of the 48 website features that were examined. These features are classified under the six dimensions of hotel information, product information, non-product information, payment, customer relationship management, and reservation. Almost all of the examined hotel websites (>80%) provide contact details, an e-mail address, and an overview of the hotel in question, and 72% of the hotels provide a room description. Half of the hotel websites include rate information, a multilingual site, a photo gallery, and the option to make a reservation through e-mail. Value-added information, such as news, customer surveys, directions, and promotional details regarding destinations of interest, is available on 35% of the examined websites. Less than 10% of the websites provide travel-related information, such as customs regulations, local transportation options, weather reports, methods of altering or tracking reservations, and cancellation policies. Finally, none of the examined sites provide an online payment feature, although 48% of the hotels provide an e-mail reservation option. Table 3 presents the ANOVA results and the percentage of website feature presence across the categories. As illustrated in Table 3, the most popular category among Iranian hotel websites is product information with 29.1% feature presences, followed by CRM (20.2%) and hotel information (18.4%). Out of the six categories, only product information (p-value ¼ 0.049) shows significance difference across the star rating. Similar to other hotel Table 1 Website adoption by Iranian hotels. Star ratings (higher the better)
n
One Two Three Four Five Total
430 266 140 65 24 925
Website
KruskaleWallis
n (%) Yes
No
6 15 22 18 14 75
424 251 118 47 10 850
(1) (6) (16) (28) (58) (8)
(99) (94) (84) (72) (42) (92)
Chi-square
p-value
4.000
0.406
S. Salavati, N.H. Hashim / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 367e374 Table 2 Website features presence (n ¼ 75). Feature Percentage 1. Hotel information News 31 CEO message 4 Hotel overview 83 Financial reports 0 Employment opportunities 3 Investor and community relations 0 2.Product information FAQs 7 Rates/fares 56 Virtual tours 11 Photo gallery 59 Room description 72 Privacy and security 0 Interactivity-winnowing 0 3. Non-product information Security 0 Customs 1 Weather/climate 12 How to get there 29 Other places to see/visit 35 Local transport information 5 Other e any unique content 0 4. Payment Debit cards 0 Credit cards 0 Electronic cash 0 Virtual credit cards 0 Currency converter 0 5. Customer Relationship Management Feedback 0 E-newsletter 0 Mailing lists 0 Contact details 92 E-mail address 80 Free downloads 4 Loyalty systems 0 Reciprocal links 0 Customer surveys 28 Call-back services 0 Customer profiling 5 Customised content 0 Mail-to-friend button 0 Competition and games 1 Content in other languages 53 Promotions and special offers 0 6. Reservation Cancellation policy 7 Checking availability 1 Tracking reservations 0 Cancelling reservations 0 Amending reservations 0 Making e-mail reservations 48 Creating customer accounts 0
websites studies, the five-star hotels had the highest future presence compared to the ratings. 5.3. Hypothesis testing Table 4 presents the analysis result for website age, number of updates, and page rank. The results indicate that the average website age is 2070 days, or approximately five and a half years. The first Iranian hotel website was created by a four-star hotel in 1999, and in 2000, a five-star hotel became the next hotel to establish a website. A three-star hotel was the newest hotel to start a website, on March 16, 2011.1
1
Data collection completed on August 25, 2011.
371
The minimum and maximum number of updates belongs to two four-star hotels, which have been updated one time and 144 times. On average, the examined hotel websites have each been updated 30.7 times, and the highest and the lowest ranks are five and zero, respectively. Fifty percent of the hotel websites have been updated less than 17 times since they were created. The average page rank of the homepages of the examined websites is 1.89 out of 10. The Pearson correlations test in Fig. 2 shows no significant association between website adoption and various factors, including website age (r ¼ 0.074, p ¼ 0.593), number of website updates (r ¼ 0.060, p ¼ 0.697), and hotel age (r ¼ 0.001, p ¼ 0.993). Similarly, correlation result indicates that there is no significant relation between hotel age (r ¼ 0.060, p ¼ 0.733) and the number of updates to the hotel's website. However, the test indicates that there is a significant relationship between website and hotel age (r ¼ 0.333, n ¼ 58, p ¼ 0.031). In addition, Spearman correlation tests reveal that significant correlations exist not only between website adoption and the PR rating (r ¼ 0.320, p ¼ 0.006) but also between website adoption and the hotel star rating (r ¼ 0.273, n ¼ 75, p ¼ 0.040). There is also a significant relationship between the websites' ages and their PR ratings (r ¼ 0.397, p ¼ 0.025) and between the websites' ages and their star ratings (r ¼ 0.296, p ¼ 0.029). However, no significant relationship exists between the number of updates to hotel websites and either their PR ratings (r ¼ 0.172, p ¼ 0.375) or the star ratings of their corresponding hotels (r ¼ 0.087, p ¼ 0.575). 6. Discussion and conclusion 6.1. Summary of findings The main objective of this study was to investigate the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. In addition to investigating the adoption rate and age of the websites, this study investigated the performance of the websites based on the presence of website features, page rank, and number of updates. To our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the website adoption and performance of Iranian hotels. Although the results show no significant difference in the website adoption rate across star ratings, the findings were similar to previous hotel website adoption studies (Hashim, Murphy, Purchase, & O'Connor, 2010; Murphy et al., 2007), which found that high-rated Iranian hotels created websites earlier than lowrated hotels. An 8% adoption rate indicates that website adoption remains at a very early stage in Iran, implying that vast opportunities exist for Iranian hotels to adopt websites. This study found a weak and negative relationship between website adoption and the number of updates to a website. This study found that 50% of the hotel websites had been updated less than 17 times since they were created, and the average page rank of the homepages of the examined websites was 1.89 out of 10. The bandwagon effect explains this phenomenon of early adoption and poor implementation (McBride, 1997). These early website adopters may have created websites to follow current trends, but they may not have understood the benefits and objectives of having a website. By contrast, the younger hotels appear to have leapfrogged older hotels in terms of website use (Ismail, Hashim, Schegg, & Murphy, 2009), and these younger hotels demonstrated superior website implementation. In addition, this study found that 91% of the examined Iranian hotels (68 out of 75) used the global .com domain to host their websites, whereas only seven hotels used the Iran-specific country domain of .ir to host their websites. Research on domain names recommends using branded domains, including country domains, to assist buyers and increase familiarity and confidence (Hashim &
372
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Table 3 ANOVA analysis and the percentage of each category. Features (category)
Five-star (n ¼ 14)
Four-star (n ¼ 18)
Three-star (n ¼ 22)
Two-star (n ¼ 15)
One-star (n ¼ 6)
Ave. (n ¼ 75)
F value
p-value
Hotel information Product information Non-product information CRM Reservation Payment
26.2a 38.8 14.3 19.6 10.2 0.0
19.4 31.7 11.9 20.1 8.7 0.0
18.2 25.3 9.7 16.8 4.5 0.0
17.8 25.7 14.3 19.2 7.6 0.0
22.2 21.4 7.1 14.6 11.9 0.0
20.2a 29.1 11.8 18.4 7.8 e
1.407 2.276 0.462 1.236 1.213 e
0.241 0.049b 0.763 0.304 0.313 e
a b
Percentage. p < 0.05.
Murphy, 2007). This result may have been observed for several reasons. First, the administration of the .ir domain is under government control that involves bureaucratic procedures, such as long processes and multiple types of documentation, to obtain and maintain a website in this domain. These bureaucratic procedures demotivate and hinder businesses from adopting this domain name. Second, there is a higher acquisition cost for an .ir website than for a .com website. An .ir domain name could cost USD 25 (IraNIC, 2013) compared to a .com, which may be as cheap as USD 12 per year (Network Solutions, 2013). Finally, this result may reflect the popular belief that the .com domain is more popular than other domains and that it may thus provide a more effective channel than the .ir domain for promoting a business (Mueller, 1998). The content analysis of each website found that existing hotels use websites primarily to introduce their business. E-commerce activities are minimal among Iranian hotels; in fact, none of the hotels in this study provided online reservations, and only half of the 75 evaluated websites provide a multilingual option. The construction of websites that provide information in other languages, such as English and Arabic, can help tourists who are unfamiliar with Iran find required information. As the importance of the Internet as a tool for gathering information and making travel decisions continues to grow (Hudson & Thal, 2013; Jordan, Norman, & Table 4 Website and hotel characteristics. Rating
n
First Website Ave. websites Ave. Webpage Websites updates created age (day) Rank (1e10) n ¼ 44a n ¼ 55a n ¼ 73a Ave. Max Min
One-star Two-star Three-star Four-star Five-star Mean
6 15 22 18 14 75
Mar 18, 2004 Feb 03, 2004 Apr 01, 2001 Oct 02, 1999 May 24, 2000 e
a
Available samples
1276 1567 2252 1964 2580 2070
0.83 1.00 1.45 2.11 3.77 1.89
5.33 38.00 33.92 29.77 32.27 30.70
3 4 3 1 2 e
8 67 66 144 99 e
Vogt, 2013), Internet marketing will become increasingly vital to tourism (Hung & Law, 2011), particularly given the recent surge in tourism in Iran. Both website adoption and proper website implementation are critical to the success of Internet marketing. 6.2. Managerial implications Out of 925 hotels registered with the Hoteldari.com directory, 92% of these hotels lack an online presence. This finding suggests a huge opportunity for Internet adoption and penetration by Iranian hotels. The alarming non adoption rate found in this study should alert hoteliers, the Iranian government, and related ministries and agencies of the potential to improve Internet use by Iranian hotels. As the Internet becomes essential for operational and strategic purposes (Bai et al., 2008; Nasution & Mavondo, 2008), hotels without the Internet face competitive disadvantages. However, to ensure that hotels benefit from the technology, the decision to adopt Internet use necessitates both long- and short-term planning. It seems time for the early adopter hotels to re-evaluate and revise their objectives for going online. Since their first Internet adoption 15 years ago, the five- and four-star hotels seem to have little sense of direction for their online presence. The management of these hotels should consider outsourcing aspects of website management to provide ideas and recommendations for good website design since the aesthetic appeal of a hotel website is positively related to booking decisions (Phelan, Christodoulidou, Countryman, & Kistner, 2011), and should consistently monitor and update their hotel websites. This study has several shortcomings. The website features that were considered in this study may not be the comprehensive. Future studies could add website feature considerations, such as social networking and mobile options. In addition, future research initiatives could extend the current study by investigating Iranian opinions on the usability of hotel websites. Finally, future investigations could extend the current study by examining the use of e-mail by Iranian hotels.
Fig. 2. Correlations between factors.
S. Salavati, N.H. Hashim / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 367e374
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S. Salavati, N.H. Hashim / Tourism Management 46 (2015) 367e374 Shahram Salavati is a senior lecturer in the department of Business Administration at the Islamic Azad University e Tonekabon Branch, Iran. He is also a PhD candidate of Management in the Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). His research interests include Internet Marketing, electronic commerce, tourism, and electronic tourism.
Noor Hazarina Hashim is a Senior Lecturer at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. She teaches E-Marketing, E-Business and other marketing courses to both graduate and undergraduate students. Dr Hazarina earned her PhD from The University of Western Australia, and her research and consultation interests include effective Internet use in organisations, application of Internet in tourism industry and destination marketing. Her passion is teaching, and she believes that learning goes beyond the classroom. Her publications have appeared in Tourism Management, Journal of Computer Mediated Communications, International Journal of Hospitality Management and Journal of Information Technology and Tourism.