Service gap in hotel website load performance

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how well hotel website load time performance compared against customer expectation benchmarks. In a competitive market, service interactions are important. As customers move to mobile devices, the time to load a website is a critical part of the service delivery. Long load times can lead to poor service experiences, customer frustration and lost business. Hotel website load times on both mobile and desktop devices were examined and compared to service expectations. Design/methodology/approach The study used an online service to assess and compare website load performance using both desktop and mobile devices for 259 international hotel company and sub-brand websites. Findings The time to load hotel websites was significantly slower on mobile devices compared to desktops. Load times on both platforms exceeded 3 s, which is considered best practice. Long load times represent a service gap and can cause dissatisfaction resulting in a potential customer abandoning the website for a competitor’s site, thus affecting sales. Research limitations/implications While the population for the study was robust in size and contained most of the major hotel companies worldwide, it was not exhaustive. Data also represent a snapshot and will change over time. Load times vary based on test location, access device and network traffic. Additionally, web page load times and customer expectations will change as technology evolves. Originality/value Increased use of mobile devices for hotel reservations increases the importance of mobile service delivery. This is the first known study to measure hotel website load times for mobile devices, and to examine both mobile and desktop performance against best practice. The results of this study highlight a service gap, which can lead to loss of business. Given the consistency of the results, the authors suspect that this is an issue that has not been recognized within the industry. This study is valuable because it exposes an issue of website design not generally addressed in the hospitality industry, even though tools are available to monitor site performance.

Understanding the perceived satisfaction and revisiting intentions of lodgers in a restricted service scenario: evidence from the hotel industry in quarantine

“…The underlying idea is that the quality of a service is related to the gap between a customer’s expectations and perceptions of the service (the customer perceived gap) (Li et al 2017 ; Stefano et al 2015 ; Lee 2013 ; Wei et al 2011 ; Brown et al 1993 ). Hospitality researchers have examined service quality gap for hotels in areas such as the appearance of the guest room, hotel staff performance, and the value of the cost performance (Stringam and Gerdes 2019 ; Fullinfaw and Sunil 2019 ; Al-Ababneh et al 2018 ; Boon-Liat and Zabid 2013; Kinderis et al, 2011 ; Markovic and Raspor 2010 ). In addition to differences in business environment and function, research perspectives are also changing rapidly.…”

“…Bravo et al ( 2019 ) extended the study by Jasinskas et al ( 2016 ) and found that hotel service expectations and demanding customer responses are linked by the service quality model. Stringham and Gerdes ( 2019 ) investigated a hotel official website load time performance compared against customer expectation benchmarks.…”

Evaluasi Performa Website Berdasarkan Pengujian Beban Dan Stress Menggunakan Loadimpact (Studi Kasus Website Iain Salatiga)

“…Searah dengan fungsinya, semakin kompleks fungsi didalamnya akan membuat ukurannya menjadi semakin besar [13]. Faktor yang terkait dengan performa website adalah waktu yang dibutuhkan untuk menampilkan halaman website [14].…”

An Alternate Unsupervised Technique Based on Distance Correlation and Shannon Entropy to Estimate λ0-Fuzzy Measure

“…For instance, if the potential customers failed to trace the desired details, they may not only leave the website with huge disappointment but it will also negatively affect their purchase decision [59]. In addition, the time taken for a website to load may also cause customers to switch to the website of other competitor, especially when it comes to customers that are impatient [60,61].…”