A new publication:

Cantoni L., Faré M., Inversini A., Passini V. (2011). Hotel Websites and Booking Engines: A Challenging Relationship. in Rob Law, Matthias Fuchs & Francesco Ricci (eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2011 (Proceedings of the International Conference in Innsbruck, Austria, January 26-28, 2011), Springer, Wien – New York 2011, pp. 241-252.

Abstract:

This study analyzes the relationship between hotel corporate websites and hotel corporate booking engines. This two systems are critical for the hospitality sector: hotel website is a very important mean for online hospitality marketing, while hotel booking engine represent the possibility of conversion without intermediation fees for the hoteliers. Often these two systems are managed by different companies on different web servers and they do not share information about website’s visitors and booking conversions. Thanks to a case study on one of the major Italian hotel chain, this paper explores a possible way to analyze the activities performed on the two systems exploring different possible correlations to assess the importance of the inter-system communication.