 |  | | | Guidelines and Standards for Hotels in Online Distribution | |
Quality management in tourism - a topic, which demands a lot of attention from hoteliers and numerious hotel owners and managers are thus facing an almost unsolvable problem. We live in times during which we are affected by a very intense use of the internet by a continuously increasing number of critical and demanding users or customers - thus, the area of quality management - online distribution in particular - should be the main focus for hotel business. It is at the same time, however, the area where most of the mistakes take place.
Many respective publications written in German and English language have dealt with the theme of tourism relating to information- and communication technologies (ICT) on a high level so far. There is no doubt that many touristic business (with an existing basis and knowledge concerning online distribution) can successfully work with these publications.
This publication has its main focus on the fact, that a fundamental science-based piece concerning the above-mentioned topic has never been published so far. Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in this case 3*** and 4**** hotel businesses, which do not have any or only very little experience with the use of the internet, have problems dealing with scientifically based texts and thus have no access to either effective online distribution or up-to-date service quality.
The author's personal business experiences (tourism marketing and distribution) have shown that many SMEs still do not own a hotel website, they are not present on online booking platforms, and they do not use dynamic yield management. Therefore, the author felt the need to create a set of quality guidelines for the online distribution of hotels. With the help of the work at hand, a SME should be able to follow clear and comprehensible guidelines (with regard to customer satisfaction and competitiveness concerning other hotel businesses) and thus to place its hotel business on a satisfying and effective distribution basis. |
