Analysis of Internet Usage in Four Star Hotels of Addis Ababa
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Date
2015-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Internet marketing is viral and has the potential to spread brand awareness quickly and
far and it is said to be able to develop link pulls, attention and massive amounts of traffic.
The usage of Internet marketing in hotels has been growing rapidly in the tourism
industry worldwide. Even though there is a large variation in the intensity of use of
Internet marketing in the hospitality industry. However the Ethiopian Hospitality
Industry, especially the hotel sector has not utilized this important tool to market them
and find new niche. While the Internet usage varies across countries, even within a
country there are large variations amongst hotels. These variations are mainly due to the
impacts of several factors associated with the internal and external factors of the
establishment. This study attempts to analyze the Internet marketing usage rate of fourstar
hotels in Addis Ababa. The facets are classified into three broad groups: the location
of the hotel, internal facets of the hotel and technological facets. This study was
conducted with 17 four-star hotels in Addis Ababa Ethiopia is used to assess the
relationship of these facets. The gap seen here is that the market and marketing strategies
implemented are in totally different directions. Hotels promote their facilities and
services on local Media while their target market in most cases is foreign countries
because there is no justification for Addis Ababa residents stay in hotel except in rare
cases as witnessed in this research. Judgmental sampling technique was implemented
while the methodology used is mainly descriptive research with some correlation
analysis. Conclusions reached are four-star hotels in Addis Ababa are not utilizing
Internet marketing to the fullest. The research has recommended on how to resolve
internal, technological and location facets that hampered them from implementing this
useful marketing tool, signifying the strongest relationship is seen between the internal
facets followed by location and technological facets. It highlighted on how to best utilize
websites, social media, search engines, training skills, web trafficking system and
working on change of perception to do Internet marketing
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Keywords
Internet Marketing, Hotel, Internet Usage Rate