Evaluation of Hotel Web Pages According to User Suitability

Introduction

Advances in technology, which are effective in many sectors, present a lot of influence in the field of tourism. Companies need to adapt to these developments in order to ensure their continuity. Especially, advances in internet technology provide to meet the demands and needs of consumers to companies in the field of tourism (Şahin & Cıbıt, 2016). According to the internet and social media statistics prepared every year by “We are social” and “Hootsuit”, Turkey Electronic Commerce statistics when evaluating results from 2019, has emerged that the highest spending is made in the travel category. Compared to the previous year, the highest increase was in the category of travel expenditures with a rate of 9.7% (Bayrak, 2019). Hotel and holiday alternatives are easily accessible by helping the hotel and tour reservation websites of travel agencies. Consumers face many alternatives in hotel and holiday choices (Flavian et al., 2006).

It has become easier to present information in today's world, where communication has developed rapidly, distance has disappeared and the world has become smaller. Individuals or institutions share on the internet their information with their stakeholders via Web servers. While the information is presented via the Web, the features such as the format, color, placement of the screen, the structure of the characters used and the timeliness should be carefully designed. The performance of the web servers should be sufficient. Information requirements may not be met if a low-scale server is used and a high level of demand is received. This negatively affects users. Websites especially give businesses the opportunity to embody their products in terms of the service sector. Small hotel businesses, which cannot allocate large amounts of resources for marketing activities, can meet these needs at a much lower cost with a well-designed website over the Internet. Accommodation establishments should be followers in order to take maximum benefit of all the advantages provided by the Internet. They guide in organizing the web pages and updating their contents. Web pages must contain some information and have features (Geyik, 2010).

Users want to see room rates, available room categories, reservation policy and secure online reservation system from a hotel website. It is important for users to have the ability to view and change their reservations on the website after making their reservations. In addition, customers want all this information to be understandable and easily accessible on the website. The visual and audio technologies enable users to see hotel rooms and facilities such as a virtual tour. These are among the features that users want most to be found on hotel websites. When the features on the hotel websites are analyzed separately, it is observed that the mostly preferred features of hotel websites are address, telephone, fax, e-mail, room information, facility information, photo album, map, multiple language options and room prices regardless of the hotel category. It has been determined that online availability, online reservation and secure online sales features allow hotels to sell from their websites. The percentage of website features that give potential customers the opportunity to sell online is over 50% in 3-star hotels, 70% in 4-stars, and 90% in 5-stars. It shows that the hotels understand the importance of selling to the customer directly from their websites and they started to invest in their websites in this direction. Hotels should pay attention to give the best price guarantee to the potential customer. The best price guarantee is an important tool to encourage customers not only choosing any agency but also booking on the hotel's website (Ovalı, 2019).