A Study of the Hotel Industry's Application of the Web Site as a Marketing Tool

The purpose of this study is to provide a direction on developing effective web site marketing strategy for China hotels by evaluating, analyzing and comparing the web sites between China hotels and U.S. hotels. In the article, the web site marketing attributes were identified and categorized into four groups “information”, “communication”, “distribution” and “transaction” based on the ICDT model and literature review. Total 52 hotel's web sites were evaluated to collect the primary data. After data analysis, the results of T-test and Chi-square revealed that there was a big gap between China and USA hotels on the use of web site as a marketing strategy tool. The finding has important industry implication for China hotel mangers to see the gap and take action accordingly.