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(Buhalis and Law, 2008). Business practices, strategies and industry structures have been transformed by the development of such technologies (Porter, 2001). The establishment of the Internet in the 1990s has provided researchers with the opportunity to examine the use of Internet applications in the tourism and hospitality industries . The Internet, the most infl uential ICT, serves as an effective marketing and communication strategy for both suppliers and consumers, and facilitates information sharing, communication and online shopping (O'Connor, 2004). The continuous increase in the number of Internet users is evidence of the popularity of this technology, and hospitality and tourism practitioners are increasingly devoting time and effort to their websites to develop and maintain customer relationships and enlarge their market share .The development of ICTs has not only had an impact on the tourism and hospitality industries, but also on academe. Researchers recognized the importance of websites to these industries early on, and the literature thus contains numerous studies exploring related issues. Lu and Yeung (1998) were pioneers in this arena, proposing a framework for evaluating website performance based on functionality and usability. A well-defi ned model of website evaluation, however, remains lacking. The website evaluations in previous studies can generally be classifi ed into two main streams: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research usually employs performance indices or scores to represent overall website quality; whereas qualitative research evaluates website quality without the use of numerical scores or indices.The importance of research in the tourism and hospitality industries has long been recognized (Law and Chon, 2007 devoted substantial research efforts to discovering innovations and helping industry practitioners apply their fi ndings. As such, there is a strong relationship between academic fi ndings and industry practice in these fi elds, with tourism and hospitality practitioners applying such fi ndings to improve operational practices. More recently, both academic and industry attentions have turned to tourism/hospitality website evaluation , and a number of reviews of the use of ICT in these fi elds have been published. Frew (2000) Neither study therefore provides a comprehensive overview of this type of research. Further, the study carried out by Buhalis and Law (2008) was intended only to provide a general review of ICT use in tourism. The study reported herein was designed to provide an up to date and comprehensive review of website evaluation in previous tourism and hospitality research, and to explore existing research gaps and directions for future research. As Han and Mills (2006) stated that the use of the Web in hospitality and tourism began only in 1995, this study thus reviewed articles published from January 1996 to September 2009. METHODOLOGYThis study reviewed 68 website evaluation studies related to travel/tourism and hospitality that were published betw...

This article reports the findings of a study that examined Hong Kong online users who use travel websites for travel planning and online travel experience sharing. The empirical findings from a large-scale domestic survey conducted in 2010 reveal that 32.7% of the respondents had used at least one travel website for travel planning in the past 2 years. In addition, 24.5% of these respondents had shared their travel experience online. On the whole, the travel website users were young, highly educated, and had a high level of personal income. In general, the propensity to share travel experiences decreased with age. In contrast, education level up to college/university level positively influenced the respondents’ willingness to share travel experiences, but the propensity decreased with higher levels of education. This study, although limited in scope, will be of interest to academic researchers and industry practitioners who are seeking to better understand the behavior of travelers using the Internet.

In view of the synergistic interaction between technology and hospitality services, this article reports the findings of a study that analyzed articles related to information technology (IT) published in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly ( CQ) and its predecessor, Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly ( CHRAQ), a first-tier journal that places emphasis on the application of research to hospitality businesses. Through an examination of content from CHRAQ’s inaugural issue in the early 1960s to the latest volume (in mid-2011), ninety-five articles were identified as relevant. A content analysis revealed that more than half of the articles focused on the hospitality industry in general and that a substantial number of IT-related articles had been published since the 1980s. This article contributes to a better understanding of the progress of the IT research conducted by hospitality researchers over the past five decades.

Although traditional travel agents have played an important role as proxies enabling travelers to make connections with hotels, the emergence of the internet has changed the traditional relationship between hotels and travel agents. Instead of a traditional agent-principal relationship, online travel agents (OTAs) seem to act as more than just intermediaries and more as business partners or vendors. Scholars have previously observed troubled, if not hostile, relationships between hotels and OTAs. This article reports a case study analyzing online comments on the 2009 feud between Choice Hotels International and Expedia.com. This analysis identified eight themes in three overall categories: the background to the feud (i.e., characteristics of the hotel industry, current business environment, Expedia's business practices), the perspectives of hospitality industry professionals on the feud (i.e., wake-up call for hoteliers, Choice Hotels' decision), and expectations concerning the nature of the relationship between hotels and OTAs (i.e., a symbiotic relationship between hotels and OTAs, experience of dealing with guests who book through OTAs and Expedia, and recommendations for hotels). Chief among the study's conclusions is that hotels must find ways to make the most effective possible use of available technology and distribution channels, and perhaps even form consortia to share information about third-party distribution channels.