Motivations for Visiting Hotel Websites: Chinese versus International Consumers

Abstract

The online travel industry has attracted great interest from academics and practitioners, with the hospitality industry being identified as one of the most popular research topics in the field. Many researchers have evaluated websites and considered ways of improving their quality. However, limited research has considered the cultural aspect of a website’s performance. Chinese consumers, in particular, have not received sufficient attention, and most published articles are focused on the Western context. This study uses qualitative methods to investigate the perceptions of Chinese users’ on hotel websites, and to identify their requirements for using those websites. Chinese consumers require six unique factors: employment/internal staff list with photos, message board/bulletin board service, one-to-one online services, celebrity stays recorded, unique design of the website’s logo, and a Chinese version of a hotel website. The perceptions and requirements of international users were also considered and compared to those of their Chinese counterparts. The findings also revealed differences in preferences between Chinese and international website users.