Chapter 18 An Assessment Methodology for Hotel Websites : Application to the Top 10 Cities Destination in the World

It is essential for hotel companies to evaluate and improve website performance in order to keep and increase their online presence and competitiveness in the marketplace. Based on the relative literature, in this article, the authors adapt the Web Assessment Index (WAI) to evaluate the attractiveness of the hotel websites. This has been validated in other studies in the literature, and measures the quality of a Website based on 4 dimensions: visibility, speed, navigability, and content. An application compares the performance of 10 hotels from each of the 10 top cities destinations in the world. The results show that there were significant differences between cities in the overall index and also between 4-stars and 5-stars hotels. The authors’ study also found a significant correlation between the WAI and the room price, so the more expensive hotels also show the best sites according with our index. The results could be useful for hoteliers to conduct a benchmarking analysis of the best sites, and propose improvements.