How info-communication technologies change hotel room reservation services?

Introduction

The information communication technologies (ICT), i.e. the software and supporting technologies have assisted in changing organisational activities. Broadly speaking ICT have eliminated the inefficiencies of passé business processes, e.g. hotel room reservation services and organisational structures: We have witnessed many hotel businesses developed from localised business to a transnational one. ICT have also created new opportunities for firms like Zuji.com to act as transaction broker, i.e. an online travel agent to facilitate transactions between hotels and consumers. Effects of using ICT in business processes (and environment) and its foreseeable future are discussed.

Past

Business in the past was on a business to consumer model (B2C), people basically call, write in or make a trip down to the hotel physically. Or another way is through agency where they will bundle up promotion so as to attract more customers. The hotel staff can have a more physical contact with the customer, it helps to build a relationship.

Such business can be time consuming and at the same time costly. The hotels would incur middlemen costs as they engage the services of travel agents to recommend their rooms to customers. More over when come to comparing prices, they had no choice but to either call or physically be there to book it, it therefore causes a lot of trouble and unnecessary time wasted. At the same time, you had to make the payment over the counter. Hotel reservations in the past were inefficient as most transactions were done manually on paper.

Present

With the help of ICT at any place or anytime, with internet access you can simply just click on to the website to book a room. It shows how fast and efficiency information can be passed on, just by clicking on to the web, within second, your room is already book. And what’s so great about ICT? With the technology now, you are able to view the location of the hotel, the types of rooms (specially the design or concept of it), book within your budget, view comments of the hotel and even compare prices with the other hotels etc...

Although with a click you can do wonders, there bound to be some negative points, faulty monetary transactions or even scams can occur when making payment online, cancellation policies are not standardized and will causes more complication.

Transaction broker: created the option of having no agency nor fiduciary relationship between brokers and sellers or buyers. Having no more than a facilitator relationship, transaction brokers assists buyers, sellers, or both during the transaction without representing the interests of either party who may then be regarded as customers.

In today context, effective communication is the key. ICT allow companies like Zuji.com to enter into the global economy. Business no longer contain itself in a local area, rather, competition is on global basis.

With ICT making international boundary more obscure, everyone can buy anything from the other side of the world even though that side is actually sleeping. For example, anyone could make reservations for hotel rooms anytime and anywhere.

Another advantage is that with many e-business joining the global e-market, it creates opportunities for these e-businesses to cooperate with one another. Such as the case of transactional brokers like Zuji.com, Asiarooms who have invested and cooperate with Google Street View (by Google) to provide better services by providing locations and pictures of the hotel. With such value –added service provided, it helped to ease the uncertainty of clients as they choose the hotels that best fit their criteria.

In addition, customer can now obtain much more information about the same few hotels on different websites within a shorter time. This allows them to make more comparisons between services that different transactional brokers like Zuji.com, Asiarooms, Octopus provide.

Last but not least, we also look into the convenience of payments. Common modes of payment include credit card and debit card supported by Visa, Mastercard and Diners.

While ICT creates new opportunities for firms and individuals, firms must be aware of new problems, issues and challenges created by ICT.

One of the challenges, companies like Zuji.com, Asiarooms, Octopus need to constantly keep up with the fast-changing pace of the ICT.

Secondly, with online payments through credit/debit cards, these transactional brokers must be able to provide secured systems to ensure that payments made are safe and would not be the next target for crime.  

Summary

Business processes have become more efficient and cost effective. It allows for more rapid coordinated responses between hotels and consumers - hotels are able to deliver customer satisfaction which would be their main objective. It would appear that there is no need for middleman to facilitate transaction between hotels and consumers as advancement in ICT continues. However, changes in the business processes (and environment) also pose new challenges to firms, e.g. threats to individual privacy – data privacy issues.