Tim Fenenko, one of my students of the Innovative Hospitality Management masters program has recently completed a survey that aimed to find out how new web developments are being used in the hospitality industry. This survey is part of his Masters thesis that we will also make available once it is completed. In anticipation of his thesis, here are the raw results of this survey and his first interpretations of these results.

This article + data from individual questions via RSS

The next questions were designed to get an impression of the hoteliers understanding of RSS feeds and details on the usage of RSS by hotels they represented. It appeared that 74% of respondents knew what an RSS feed was. However, from those who knew what an RSS feed was, only 26% have answered that their hotel uses RSS. In total, 19% of hoteliers have confirmed that their hotel uses RSS. The most common use of RSS proved to be syndication only. 57% of hotels that use RSS use it just for syndication. From those hotels that use RSS only for syndication, 92% use it to syndicate their specials, 58% - to syndicate hotel news, and 42% of hotels syndicate information about events close to their hotel. It turned out that 43% of hotels use RSS for syndication and aggregation at the same time. Of those hotels that make use of both syndication and aggregation, 89% syndicate hotel news, 78% syndicate their specials, and 44% syndicate information about events close to their hotel. With regards to aggregation, 78% of hotels that use aggregation and syndication simultaneously use RSS feeds and "Review" feeds from sites like TripAdvisor with tools like Netvibes, iGoogle, My Yahoo or Google Reader. 44% of those hotels use RSS feeds from other websites or content providers to enrich their website (reviews, podcasts, events information, weather...). And 22% uses an Intranet that aggregates RSS feeds to inform and educate hotel's employees.

After the introductory and RSS-specific questions, questions about Web 2.0 tools and reasons for using or not using them followed. It turned out that 46% of hotels were not making use of any of them. From the 54% of hotels that were using second generation web tools the most popular appeared to be Social Networks (33%), Map Mashups (32%), Blog (21%), and Tags (20%). Least popular were Events monitoring (11%), Podcasts (10%), and Social Bookmarking (10%).

Respondents who clicked "Our hotel doesn't use any Web 2.0 tools or services" were redirected to a question asking to elaborate on the reasons for not using them. It appeared that the majority, 45%, didn't have any specific reasons. At the same time, 34% answered that there was lack of knowledge on how to use them. 23% replied that there was lack of knowledge on the link between Web 2.0 tools' usage and profitability while 19% responded that management of their hotel supposes it doesn't have added value. Finally, 11% answered that the reason was lack of personnel. The respondents that confirmed that they did use Web 2.0 tools or services, were redirected to a question asking to clarify the reasons for using those tools. It turned out that the majority, 67%, uses Web 2.0 tools for Customer Relationship Management. 65% use them to increase their brand awareness while 62% used them for search engine optimization. Additionally, 48% used Web 2.0 tools to increase their profits, and 23% for internal communication and collaboration.

With regards to monitoring guests' reviews on third-party web sites it became clear that the majority, 86%, does monitor guests' reviews on websites such as www.tripadvisor.com, and an overwhelming 82%, of those who did, followed up by posting a comment and/or solving the problem.

The final section of the survey intended to get a general idea about the hotel, the respondent, and the level of competence of managers responsible for "Online Management" or "Revenue Management" of that particular hotel. 57% of hoteliers represented a hotel, which belonged to a chain, while 43% represented an independent hotel. Almost all of the respondents were sales and marketing, revenue, or general managers. Concerning the number of people responsible for "Online Management" or "Revenue Management" and their level of competence, 36% of hotels had more than one person responsible, 32% answered that the responsibilities were in addition to other responsibilities by one or more staff members, and 30% of hotels had one person solely responsible. Just 3% indicated they had no person assigned to the responsibilities of "Online Management" or "Revenue Management". Hoteliers that represented hotels, which had managers responsible for "Online Management" or "Revenue Management", rated their competence as follows: 35% said that they possessed thorough understanding, 28% answered that they were experts, 21% opted for adequate, and 16% confessed that it could be better.

A more thorough discussion of these results by correlating the responses of the individual question in relation to other research will be presented in my thesis, and will also be published on this site. Please note that I have made the survey results available via RSS so it can be easily published on other sites or blogs. In fact I would like to encourage you to use this feed to continue the discussion about these results with your readers.

Finally I would like to thank all of you that participated in the survey, and especially those that helped promote the survey. Please don't hesitate to contact me for further information or for assistance to help you add these survey results to your blog or website.

Regards,

Tim Fenenko

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