A Study of the Exposure of Hotels Information on the Internet: A Case Study of Sabah Hotels of Malaysia

The Internet nowadays has become an important and major information search channels for travelers looking for accommodation and services provided by hotels. Hotels’ managers have adopted the Internet as one of their primary marketing channels to attract customers while website development has become one of their business infrastructures for online bookings and transactions. On the other hand, hotels’ websites are the main search target for travelers. Especially for hoteliers, owning a website is an important step in order to increase visibility and brand familiarity. However, most hotels are not aware of the important of making their websites visible to search engines and the nature of their presence on the Internet. The objective of this paper is to provide an actual assessment and evaluation on the current websites of Sabah hotels in Malaysia and analyze the web information richness in the search engines. The paper further JIBC April 2013, Vol. 18, No. 1 2 examines the search engines index ratio of the websites of Sabah hotels and provides interesting insights and recommendations on how to improve the visibility and presence on the Internet