However, with the increase in the number travellers who use internet for booking or other travel-related purposes, travel agencies without website will be failing in business. In the last few years, the use of internet has changed the methods people buy good and services, there has now been increased in online shopping.
Meanwhile, for tourism organizations to attract more customers they must use internet marketing strategies to promote their business, most hotels now use
sophisticated technology for their business as well as maintaining long-term customer relationships. Hotel needs to use effective reservation service for easy gathering of customer’s information. The use of advertising media for marketing of their products and services are very essential tools in tourism business. Therefore, the designing and management of company website are the key issues in achieving success in hotel business. Marketing manager must systematically provide necessary information for the best designing of the company website and the website must also be regularly updated with latest information that will attract more customers. Moreover, the website must also provide well-design links page so as to make the website more useful and attractive to visitors and the links must also contain information the web surfers might find useful.7
Scope of Study
The research will be centered on a selected hotel and how it is using its website for
online marketing, the important factors, and the strategies it should consider in
marketing its services online. There will be a case study to measure the
7. Weekly SEO News: Facts of the week: The importance of links of
Your sites, 1997, retrieved March 18, 2008
<>
effectiveness of its online marketing. Finally, the author will suggest recommendations for promoting the online marketing for selected hotel.
Aims and Objectives
The aim and objectives of the research will focus on how the Internet has affected the marketing of tourism industry as a whole and its effect on a specific hotel.
Furthermore, to achieve these aims the author will look into the following objectives:
1. The investigation of Internet marketing.
2. Examination of the theory and strategy of online marketing of a selected hotel.
3. Analysis the level of marketing strategies, using the company’s website as a case study.
4. Analysis of online marketing in hotel business and suggestions to address the issues.
Rationality of the research
The internet is now one of the fastest growing industries and it has spread rapidly to all over the world in few years. Thus, there are now billions of people using internet to conduct businesses and for personal communication. Therefore, because indispensable usefulness of internet, online bookings have now tremendously increased in recent years, various hotels are now using Internet to promote their businesses. For instance, the websites of the five star hotels such as the Hilton, Marriott and Intercontinental provide various information that may be useful to the customers. The argument of the writer is that if all hotels could concentrate on using internet to promote their business, the results would be more effective and there will be increase in the sales of hotels that are promoting its business online and more revenue generation for the tourism industry as a whole.
Methodology
The use of methodology in the research is to justify why research methods are necessary and when it can be used in this dissertation. The methodology is all about gathering the information and explains which research methods are most suitable. For the purpose of this research, relevant sources will be used to gather the information for the completion of this project, especially, the secondary source. Various textbooks, journals, newspapers and internet sources will be used to gather information for this dissertation. The methods enumerated in the book written by S David W. Stewart, Secondary Research: Information Sources and Method, 8 and information from the E-commerce: The internet leisure & entertainment market contents Fourth edition written Key Note Publication Limited, 9 will be used in analyzing the importance of internet in Leisure and Entertainment Industry. Additionally, sources from the internet will also be used for this dissertation. Thus, for the relevance of the project, secondary method of sourcing data will be used basically
Case Study
The case study is another application in the research that brings an
Understanding of complex issue in the research work. The use of case study is also being helpful to resolve major problem in this dissertation.
Secondary Data
Basically, the secondary research is to gather information from a range of sources for this dissertation. However, the finding of information from secondary research is available in the public and private libraries.
-
Stewart Op. Cit p.1-2
9. E-commerce Op. Cit p.11
Swart and Kamins stated in their book Secondary Research: Information Sources and Method that “Secondary information consists of sources of data and the information collected by others”10 Thus; secondary information can be obtained easily through academy books, journals, government reports and from the internet sources. They further argue that “secondary research offers relatively quick and inexpensive answers to many questions and is almost always the point of departure for primary research. They continue by stating that “Most research efforts begin with some type of secondary analysis.”11
Primary Research Method
Primary research is often termed field research, thus it is mainly sourcing of data from original source using qualitative and quantitative methods, this involves conducting face-to-face interview with people to obtain the original data. The data may also be obtained by telephone interview, observations and questionnaires. For the relevance of this project, the writer will not use the primary research method to obtain data. Therefore, since all the information for this dissertation can be obtained through secondary research, the primary research method will be discarded.Since secondary research methods will be used in this dissertation, there are some distinctive advantages of secondary source of material over primary research method .The secondary source of gathering material are considerably cheaper. and faster for the research method therefore it is less –time consuming compare to the primary source.
Additionally, the information to be used for research is already available. In addition,
10. Stewart. Op. Cit p.1-2
11. Stewart. Loc. Cit p.1-2
secondary sources provide a useful comparative tool in comparing the new and existing data and for the purposes of examining the ways the author extract information from the Internet. However, there are some disadvantages in using the secondary analysis.
Firstly, if a researcher is interested in studying a well-defined minority, he may find it very difficult to gather relevant data.
Additionally, validity of the original research might be eroded using secondary data because data can be transformed and be manipulated.
Moreover, the conclusions derive from the secondary source might be viewed by different scholars from different point of view; this may bring statistics into unjustified disrepute.
Research Design
In this dissertation, the author has decided to use secondary data for
the research. Thus sourcing of data from academic books, journals, the Internet and the newspapers will be of highest priority of the research. Books and journals will be sourced using any public libraries. The information gathered from University College Birmingham (UCB) library and the information from the internet will be used to design the dissertation. Although journals and newspapers sources might provide the newest information for the research projects, however, as mentioned above, these sources do not always provide valid or reliable information. However, information from the Internet provides prime information for this dissertation with relevance to the topic of the research: A study on hotel marketing using the internet system. The website for each hotel will provide the current information about its activities therefore, using information derive from each hotel, the researcher will be able to analyze and compare their activities, then, identify issues that must be addressed. However, it is necessary to identify various sources of information by reading articles and journals, because many sources can now be found on the Internet
Research samples
The secondary research tools used for this project were carefully analysed. The information included in the project is reliable and relevant to the research. The research sample chosen was related to the project and had helped to evaluate the objectives of the topics. The main purpose of this project was to gather relevant information and compare theories of various authors. However, the main information for this report was collected via Internet and other selective sources and this analysed the importance of company website and its development. The information gathered was from selected hotels and the nature of the gathering revealed that secondary sources were used and the nature of gathering used in analysing those sources. Additionally, the selected information on the hotels will also be gathered from their website. To gather the necessary information, evaluation will be made on the selected hotels and sources will be continually accessed through books and journals. Finally, as secondary data will be used in this dissertation, thus, non-biased approach will be used to develop the topic and the best approach will be used to provide a clear and logical arguments.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
BBC NEWS: Tourism 'boosts economy by £81bn' 17 October 2005,
Retrieved March 18, 2008
< >
2. British Life and culture: Tourist in England and the rest of UK
2007, retrieved March 18, 2008
<
junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/questions/tourism.htm>
- Internet World Stats: Usage and Population Statistics, Top 20 with the
highest number of internet users, June 2007, retrieved 18 March 2008.
< >
4. Keynote Publication Limited, E-commerce: The internet leisure &
Entertainment Market, Fourth edition, Middlesex July 2006. p.11
5. Keynote Publication Limited, Internet usage in business, eighth edition,
Middlesex July 2005 p.72.
6 Stewart, David. Secondary Research: Information
Sources and Method, Michael Karmins, Sages Publication, 1993
7. Weekly SEO News: Facts of the week: The importance of links of
Your sites, 1997, retrieved March 18, 2008
<>
