Cibersociedad Impact Of It On Business Relationships In Tourism A Conceptual Framework

IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS IN TOURISM:
A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Eugenia Ruiz
Irene Gil
Beatriz Moliner
Universitat de València

Motivation
Wide implementation of Information Technologies (IT) by tourism companies (Law & Jogaratnam, 2005; eBusiness W@tch, 2006; Observatorio, 2007).
Infrautilization of the potential of these IT (Hensdill, 1998; Martínez et al., 2006).
Although there is evidence about the benefits of technology on business competitiveness (Frew, 2000; Minghetti, 2003; Buhalis y Law, 2008), academicians have paid scarse attention to customer assessment of hotel IT and its role in value creation, being results inconclusive.

Objectives
To examine the use of hotel IT from the customer’s point of view and its effect on value creation process
To elaborate a conceptual framework as a basis to test the IT level of use and its impact on relationship value and its consequents.

Information Technologies in tourism
Information technologies (IT) gather all forms of technology used to create, capture, manipulate, communicate, exchange, present and use information in its various forms - business data, voice conversations, still images, motion pictures, multimedia presentations”, etc. - ( Ryssel et al. , 2004: 198)
The use of IT in marketing represents one of the major opportunities of tourism companies nowadays

IT in tourism - Electronic supply management Online order remittance / reception Use of ICT for supply management ICT systems connected to providers Online warehouse management - Business integrated processes Intranet ERP Systems Online monitoring of production time Electronic invoicing - ICT solutions related to customers Searchers and Metasearchers Price comparison / predictor Virtual Web communities 2.0 Auction webs - Network connectivity RTC/RDSI/ADSL/cable/MTU/PLC/LMDS Local Area Network (LAN) through cable Wi-Fi Local Area Network (W-LAN) Bluetooth World Wide Interoperability (WiMAX) - Customer relationship management (CRM) Customer information system (CIS) e-mail marketing / direct marketing Viral marketing Loyalty program - Hotel software Office software, Specific departmental software Information analysis and report management Project management, Simulators, Expert systems Web security - Electronic marketing and sales Advertising / promotional supports Online order reception Self-service technologies - Hotel hardware PC, laptop, Phone, 3G Mobile, PDA, GPS Telesecurity system LCD screens, Touch-screens In-room TV, In-room DVD Piped music, Ambient Intelligence ICT for external use In-house ICT

Advantages of ICT in hospitality
Increase market potential and marketing channels
Collect information about customers before, during and after their stay
Design of specific marketing actions for several key market segments
Real time and flexible exploitation of customer data to increase the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns
Improved customer services through website multimedia contents, e-mail, Web 2.0, etc.
Increase connection between hotel departments or functional areas as well as with providers and customers

Difficulties of ICT in hospitality
H otels are no using the full potential of the Internet an electronic marketing tools
Data-ownership dilemma
Low knowledge of technological applications by hotel managers and employees
The illegal use of SPAM by many companies re duces the effectiveness of legal commercial communications of hotels

Hotel ICT assessment
By the hotel:
Profitability
Other positive effects (increased service quality, service differentiation, increased hotel value, cost reduction, improved customer knowledge)
By the hotel customer:
ICT advancement
ICT alignment
ICT assessment by the customer depends on customer type and interaction points with the hotel (Minghetti, 2003)

Customer type and interaction with the hotel

Hotel ICT and relationship marketing
Before taking a decision of ICT investment, hotel managers should analyze the status of their relationships with customers (Sharland, 2007):
Relationship benefits
Customer value
Relationship consequences:
- commitment
- trust
- loyalty

Relationship benefits (Gwinner et al., 1998):
Confidence benefits
Social benefits
Special treatment benefits
Positive effect of ICT (e.g. Internet) on social benefits (Sheth et al., 2000).
Wide use of patronage or loyalty programs by tourism companies in order to generate special treatment benefits (Stauss et al., 2001).

Relationship value:
Value perceived by customers as a comparison of perceived benefits and sacrifices (Zeithaml, 1988; McDougall y Levesque, 2000).
Improvement in service delivery (Bhatt and Emdad, 2001).
ITC Value creation (Kent and Mentzer, 2003) Efficient (provider-hotel-customer) network electronically interconnected (Anderson, 2000)
Value creation
(Dubé and Renaghan, 2000)

Hotel ICT and relationship marketing Following the Communication Theory, effective communications through ICT contribute to improve relationships between members of the value chain (Gaski, 1984; Mohr y Nevin, 1990) Loyalty ICT have a positive influence on commitment between relatioship partners (Kent y Mentzer, 2003) ICT do not facilitate trust (Rebolledo et al., 2005; Gil et al., 2007), since trust is related to affective (non-planned) links ICT

Conclusions
Wide range of technological solutions at hotels’ disposal to improve the efficiency of their internal processes in their encounters with customers.
Evidence about positive effects of use of hotel ICT in terms of customer patronage through service customization, high service quality and added value.
Since not all customers are predisposed to establishing a long-lasting relationship, it will be convenient to implement a transactional or a relational s trategy depending on their characteristics ( Jackson , 1985).
Need to obtain information about customer technological needs and desires in order to translate this information into appropriate investments for competing in an increasingly globalized market.
Further research should be conducted on the effects of hotel ICT on its customer relationships

THANKS FOR READING
COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!

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Cibersociedad Impact Of It On Business Relationships In Tourism A Conceptual Framework

by EugeniaRuiz on Sep 14, 2009

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