A fuzzy analytic hierarchy process evaluation of hotel websites

Abstract

At present, the Internet is playing an important role both on the supply-side and the demand-side. As such, the number of online users is growing every year which is a clear evidence for the importance of this technology (Internet World Stats, 2009a). In hospitality and tourism, the Internet has a great impact in which more travelers are using it to search for information and to complete transactions online (Law & Huang, 2006). Due to its importance, the Internet is gaining more attention from both academic researchers and industrial practitioners. Many website evaluation studies have been published since the late 1990s, but there is no existing standard method for website evaluation (Law, 2007). The aim of this research is to develop a scientific model that integrates a set of website evaluation dimensions for evaluating website functionality performance. In this study, website functionality refers to the content of a site (Lu & Yeung, 1998; Chung & Law, 2003). Unlike previous studies, this research presents a new framework for evaluating website functionality performance by using a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (Fuzzy AHP). Since human judgments are often uncertain and vague, using fuzzy set theory instead of exact numbers could capture decision makers' uncertainty. The presented method could rectify this limitation of cognitive uncertainty and subjectiveness of human judgements and provide more accurate overall evaluation results. This research focuses on determining the functionality performance of hotel websites in Hong Kong from the perspective of Internet users. It methodologically contributes to measuring the relative importance of website dimensions and associated attributes in website performance. Also, findings of this study could provide practical information to hoteliers on how to develop and improve their websites.