Introduction
Information technology in general is using computers and software to manage information. This makes it possible to link and communicate people from one end to another even in isolated places. It also helps to speed up the whole process of business being done efficiently and effectively so as to help companies to make more sales and profits for shareholders.
What is e-commerce?
E-commerce is electronic commerce which involves carrying out business over the Internet with the assistance of computers linking to the customers forming a network. To be specific e-commerce would be buying and selling of goods and services and transfer of funds through digital communications without any barriers of time or distance. From the buyers’ perspective, E-commerce offers a lot of tangible advantages such as providing customers convenience with information, easier to compare and lesser time spent in resolving invoice and order discrepancies
Changes that ICT brought to room reservation services
The business in hotel industry has been growing rapidly in the past few years. In the past, when technology is less advanced, hotels reservations have to be made through phone calls. Some travellers only start looking for hotels when they reach the destination. In addition, hotels businesses are focusing on brick and mortar structure and if customers would like to know the hotel layout it will have to be base on what travel agencies describe or through word-of- mouth.
Now, millions of hotel businesses are offering their guests with online reservations. This provides alternatives for individuals to book hotel online without spending too much time to visit physical tour agencies. Direct Hotel Bookings attract frequent, loyal customers and unorganised business travellers, who focus on schedules, and convenience. This helps both the consumers as well as providers to efficiently process the transaction. For example, individual will just have to go to any search engine and type in “hotels” and a list of hotels or transaction brokers such as hotels.com, bookings.com, etc. will be obtained. Besides, comparisons of hotel room prices are made much more convenient now.
These mean that hotel businesses are one step closer to their customers; they can interact with their customers through feedback columns, e-mail and other means of online communications instead of through travel agencies or phone calls. In addition, it had been made a lot more convenient for customers to book and cancels their reservations. Websites like accorhotels.com even provides travel guides on their websites, which allows their consumers to plan their itinerary before arrival.
Before the introduction of online hotel reservation, data of customers were in the form of paper records that were archive in filling cabinets. These will cause the employees to spend more time doing the manual work and create storage problems like sorting, updating, searching, removing and editing customers profile. This will result in inefficiency in the allocation of resources which is considered an additional expense to the business
For booking.com and hotels.com, they are transaction brokers. Their websites will show list of hotels that consumers can choose from in a country, filters are also available to allow them to select the hotel that fits the criteria they are looking out for, e.g. star ratings, price range, etc, The layout has been made easy for price comparisons
With the advancement in technology securities, we can make payments online, so consumers do not have to worry about payment on the last day of stay.
In conclusion, the service that hotels provide to customers begins not at the moment they check-in, but from the moment they enter into various website to obtain more information about the hotel. For example, Goggle street map is one kind of service that the hotel buys to create more convenience for its potential customers.ICT had brings better business and management for the hotels and convenience to the consumers.
Examples of online ICT
(1) CTRIP.COM
One big reason why majority of the customers are using transaction broker sites to make their reservations is because hotels have significantly improved their websites by providing better navigation, design and content to suit the customer’s needs such as hotel link ready to navigate to the country that one is going. There is also a search engine which allows individual to find a hotel easily simply by typing the city, check in and out date, hotel name and etc very convenient and this saves a lot of time for the consumer. With a comprehensive online booking engine integrated to the hotel website it that provides real time, multilingual and multi-currency solution and high security standards which ease the booking, influencing customers' decision making and ultimately reinforcing loyalty.
Mode of Payment
After selecting the hotels that preferred, consumers can choose the options available and make payment using credit cards (VISA/ MasterCard/ American Express/ Diners Card/ JCB/ Discover).
Maps
There is also map available on the website provided by Google which allows the consumers to have an overview of where the hotel is located in that particular country and make necessary preparation. This makes it possible especially with today technologies by linking from one place to another
(2) Agoda
Agoda also come out with attractive idea of “Agoda Rewards” which allows their customers to earn rewards $ whenever they book hotel rooms online. This is a form of persuading their customers to book via their website for hotel rooms and save more.
