Evaluation of Usability: A Study of Hotel Web Sites in Hong Kong

Abstract

In spite of the increasing popularity of Internet applications to the hotel industry, and the large number of published Internet-related articles in the hospitality and tourism literature, the topic of the usability of Web sites has been largely overlooked by hospitality and tourism researchers. In other words, the ease of use of hotel Web sites remains largely unknown to hotel customers, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers. This article presents an exploratory study in which a modified heuristic technique for evaluation was developed to measure the usability of hotel Web sites. The research evaluated the Web sites of all members of the Hong Kong Hotels Association. Empirical evidence showed that minor problems of usability existed on the Web sites of Hong Kong hotels, and no significant difference was found among luxury, mid-priced, and economy hotels.