INTERNET IN THE MARKETING

A good majority of hotels are online for purely marketing purposes, but are gradually nudged towards considering adopting online booking facilities. A model developed along the lines of discovering if certain underlying antecedents have a role to play in the types of decision made and the attempt to identify the possible constraints in their uptake or higher level adoption, could aid independent hoteliers in the re-evaluation of their online strategy to improve overall marketing efficiency to match its operating vision. Finally, opportunities for third party business organizations will persist with abundance such as internet travel intermediaries. This is corroborated by figures revealing that 16% of all revenues in hospitality will be generated from the internet in 2004, and by 2006, it was estimated that the internet will contribute over 24% of all hotel bookings. Independent hoteliers are approaching the internet with much caution, but to date few of them seem to have positioned themselves to fully exploit this new technological opportunity. This suggests that there will be more opportunities for hotel software developers to meet the needs of more hoteliers who will require new software that enable an individual hotel website to work with its often pre-installed property management system