Information systems success factors for internal service management in hotel industry : a case study of Chinese Intercontinental Hotel

Abstract

In the modern world, almost all the businesses utilize information systems. In the early 2000s, the use of IT in service industries was limited to simple tools such as emails and similar technologies. However, it has gradually progressed in the last 15 years, and Information Systems have become a critical component of service industries and of business management. The hotel industry is a large industry that utilizes technology in managing its services and in this industry, utilization of the technology has become quite widespread, because, there are a number of information processes in its daily operations. Therefore, the hotel industry has started to utilize information systems for their service management. However, there has not been any research conducted in the hotel industry for IS evaluation. This study attempts to investigate the factors that affect the success of these information systems. The targeted service industry group is IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group). Going by the number of rooms, IHG is the world’s largest hotel group. In Greater China, there are numerous IHG hotels and this number is increasing daily. This research was carried out as a case study research on IHG – Greater China. In this thesis, the researcher after reviewing the literature found out the key factors that affect the success of information systems that are more specifically related to the internal service management in the hotel industry. Accordingly ,the most relevant independent variables namely: system quality, information quality, support service quality, quality of information use, end user training, user satisfaction, intention to use and IS use, were adopted for further study which relates to IS success. Moreover, a survey approach was adopted for data collection and a questionnaire was designed based on the literature review and the research model. The questionnaire was sent to a number of “IS” users in IHG hotels - Greater China Region. The respondents of the data collection include most “IS” users who use “IS” for their internal service management. Although it was expected to gather data from the proposed sample as described in the methodology section, there were fewer respondents due to some of the limitations. After the data analysis and discussion, the results indicate a significant statistical link between each independent variable and the IS success specifically for the hotel industry. Secondly, it provides conclusions regarding the most relevant factors, particularly for hotel industry internal service management. Compared to general “IS”, end user training and quality of information usability were strongly correlated to success of IS in hotel industry. This emphasizes that these factors have a huge impact on IS success in hotel industry internal service management. This includes some of the important facts on which a system designer can focus more on when designing the systems for hotel industry internal service management. Further studies on these aspects were suggested for future research.