ISORG (KLW) mini-research project
Group members: Kong HongXin
Loke Weng Onn
Wendy Lee
ISORG: “How info-communication technologies change hotel room reservation services”
Information communication technology (ICT) includes communication device or its application that leads to office automation, workflow, teamwork, process redesign, and information and knowledge management. Due to the widespread of globalization, the world is becoming more borderless, and the world trade also has made several impacts on the way people live. One major change is the way people communicate with one another. For instance, companies used to pass information via mailing of letters. However, the way information are being transmitted in the past, is no longer compatible to the corporate operations in the 21th century. Companies in this increasingly competitive market environment are highly dependent on information to make strategic decisions. Market and customer oriented, organizational efficiency and dynamic strategic business design are the keys to organization success which can only be achieved if the suitable information systems are being implemented. In another word, because the market is changing rapidly, we need a much more efficient information system to help companies facilitate both internal and external changes so that firms can survive and maintain competitive.
For instance, the hotel operations have changed mainly due to the emergence of new information communication technologies. Take hotel room reservation as an example, a transaction broker is an independent party that acts as a middleman between the buyer (customer) and sellers (hotels). Therefore, a transaction broker is essentially working to earn a commission. They are a neutral party and have no responsibility to protect your interests after the transaction. For example, if the hotel room that a customer booked through the transaction broker is unsatisfactory, the transaction broker assumes no responsibility and the customer will have to approach the hotel directly. In this case of the hotel room reservation services, the transaction broker assists customers by communicating via e-commerce and providing advice on the ideal hotel room.
Some examples of transaction brokers providing hotel room reservation services are Asiarooms, Ctrip.com and Hotels.com. At Asiarooms, customers are able to compare prices among various hotels on the webpage itself with the advancement of info-communication technologies (ICT). In the past, customers who wish to find out more about various hotel room prices will have to phone or make their way to each hotel. With ICT, it saves time and eliminates the hassle that customers have to go through as in the past. Customers are able to make an informed decision on the spot after comparing the prices online. Technology allows customers to access the internet anytime, anywhere.
Another plus point of Asiarooms is that it offers over 1000 hotels over 200 locations in Asia and this increases the probability of finding the most affordable and perfect room for each customer. Customers are also able to read other customers’ reviews about various hotels and even obtain information about the exact location of the hotels by using the Google map provided on Asiarooms.com. Without ICT, all these will not be possible.
Hotels can utilize Asiarooms to engage in promotions and offer the most attractive price to customers. It offers hotels an alternative way of marketing their services. Traditional marketing tools used by the hotels may not be able to reach out to so many audiences worldwide. With ICT, it saves time, cost and improve visibility for hotels.
By integrating a user friendly and efficient information system to the hotel business, much more values are being added to the firm’s value chain. The information that hotels received from the agents or their own website can be store in the companies own database, these information can be shared among different departments and foster better teamwork. When all these work together, hotels will be able to provide much better, more relevant and quality services to their customers. This can be reflected on how customers today with internet are able, not only to reserve a hotel room, but to book a room that they want to stay during their trip. For example, The Cityview Hotel(Hong Kong), allows customers to choose rooms for smokers or non-smokers. And the hotel management arranges rooms in certain levels for smoker but not non-smokers. This is just one of the many examples which shows how hotels nowadays can used ICT to take customer preferences into consideration for their business operations. Information received from the customers via the internet booking system can also be passed to other department by the room booking department. For instance, when the room reservation department receive requests from the customers asking for specific room services, eg, breakfast to be delivered to his room at 8.30am. This piece of information can then be forwarded to the hotel restaurant to follow up. Also, it can be passed on to the room service department so that the cleaner will only clean the room after 9.00am.
Yet with new technology, there are some disadvantages. Firstly, it may be confusing to those making the hotel room reservation (esp. if the person is illiterate). Hotels, such as Shangri-La Hotel, have different hotels situated in different countries with the same name and the tourist may be confused to which hotel he/she is booking and is highly prone to making a blunder. Also, technical problems may surface. If too many people are making hotel room reservations at the same time, the technical system may not be able to hold the influx of people visiting its webpage and the server might crash. Thus, tourist will not know if the transactions were through and it may cause a greater problem. In addition, with technology, there will bound to be terms and conditions applied and there may be too many terms and conditions that will confuse and frustrate the person booking the hotel room. The next disadvantage can be seen in complaintsboard.com, whereby various users complain about the hotel booking web provider and its inefficiency. For the case of asiarooms.com, though it is stated that there are no cancellation fees (in some situations), but a few users were complaining about how inefficient the service providers are in the refund of their money. Thus, working through a third party in the booking of hotel rooms may lead to extra red tape. Lastly, with the increased use of ICT, more popular websites are becoming targets of hackers. Hackers will hack into these websites and prompt customers to enter their personal details. Once these hackers obtain the customers’ personal information, they will use them for fraud purposes. However, transaction brokers like Hotels.com uses a secure booking system online to ensure all bookings by customers are secure and safe. This will increase customers’ confidence when booking for hotel rooms.
But beyond all the disadvantages of having the internet-booking system, most tourists still use them to make hotel room reservations because of its ease and flexibility. It has certainly make things much faster and convenient for people especially in this fast-paced society.
