Abstract
It is generally agreed that a hotel website is created for attracting business. Adding visual materials such as images and multimedia files can enrich the website’s content and enable a visitor to better understand the hotel. However, the more visual materials that are put on the website, the longer the download time. This study analyzed 102 Hong Kong hotel websites’ home pages. Empirical findings showed that economy hotels had fewer image files than their luxury counterparts but the total file size of the former group was much larger than the latter. Moreover, most luxury hotels used script programs to handle sophisticated web functions such as member login and room availability; whereas only half of the economy and mid-priced hotels used script. In general, the difference on average web page size between luxury hotels and economy hotels was only lOOKBytes (371KB and 271KB). Luxury hotels, however, contained an average of 47 objects and economy class hotels only contained 18 objects. As a result, when download speed is considered, the number of objects is not the major factor, but file size needs to be measured carefully.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Chan, S., and Law, R. (2006). Automatic Website Evaluation the case of hotels in Hong Kong. Information Technology & Tourism, 8(3/4), 255–269.
Dellaert, B, C., and Kahn, B, E. (1999). How Tolerable is Delay? Consumers’ Evaluations of Internet Websites after Waiting. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 13(1), 41–54.
Galletta, D., Henry, R., McCoy, S., and Polak, P. (2004). Website Delays: How Tolerant are Users? Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 5(1) 1–28.
Hong, W., Thong, J.Y.L., and Tam, K.Y. (2004). Destination product listing pages on ecommerce websites: an examination of presentation mode and information format. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 61(4), 481–503.
Hoxmeier, J.A., and DiCeare, C. (2000). System Response Time and User Satisfaction: An Experimental Study of Browser-based Applications. Retrieved from: www.collecter.org/archives/2000_April/03.pdf accessed date: 25/08/2007.
Internet World Stats. (2007). Internet Users in the World. Retrieved from http://www.Internetworldstats.com/stats.htm accessed date: 25/08/2007.
Jacko, J.A., Sears, A. and Borella, M.S. (2000). The effect of network delay and media on user perceptions of web resources. Behavior and information Technology, 19(6), 427–439.
King, B.A. (2001). Extreme HTML Optimization. Retrieved from: http:/www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/html/optimize/ accessed date: 25/08/2007.
King, B.A. (2003). Speed up your site website optimization. Indianapolis, Ind.: New Riders.
McKinney, V., Yoon, K. and Zahedi, F. (2002). The Measurement of Web-Customer Satisfaction: An Expectation and Disconfirmation Approach. Information Systems Research, 75(3), 296–315.
Nah, F.H., (2003). A study on tolerable waiting time: how long are Web users willing to wait? Behaviour and Information Technology, 25(3), 153–163.
Nielsen, J. (1999). Top ten mistakes’ revisited three years later. Retrieved from: Alertbox, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990502.html accessed date: 25/08/2007.
Perdue, R. (2001). Internet Site Evaluations: The Influence of Behavioral Experience, and Selected Website Characteristics. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 11(2/3), 21–38.
Pons, A.P. (2006). Semantic Prefetching objects of slower website pages. Journal of System and Software, 79(12), 1715–1724
Ramsay, J., Barbesi, A. and Preece, J. (1998). A psychological investigation of long retrieval times on the world wide web, Interacting with Computers, 10, 77–86.
Ranganathan, C. and Ganaphy, S. (2002). Key dimensions of business-to-consumer websites, Information and Management, 39(6), 457–465.
Rose, G.M, Lees, J. and Meuter, M. (2001). A refined view of download time impacts on econsumer attitudes and patronage intentions toward e-retailers. The International Journal on Media Management, 3(2), 105–111.
Shneiderman, B. (1998). Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective HumanComputer Interaction, 3 ed., Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Torkzadeh, G. and Dhillon, G. (2002), Measuring Factors that Influence the Success of Internet Commerce. Information System Research, 13(2), 187–204.
Tourism Commission. (2007). Tourism statistics: Tourism performance. Retrieved from http://www.tourism.gov.hk/english/statistics/statistics_perform.html accessed date: 25/08/2007.
Turban, E. and Gehrke, D. (2000), Determinants of E-commerce Websites. Human System Management, 19(2), 111–120.
Weinberg, B.D. (2000). Don’t Keep Your Internet Customers Waiting Too Long at The (Virtual) Front door. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 14(1), 30–39.
Webopedia (2007a). Definition of CSS, Retrieved from www.webopedia.com access date: 25/08/2007.
Webopedia (2007b). Definition of JavaScript, Retrieved from www.webopedia.com access date: 25/08/2007.
Wikipedia (2007). Definition of CSS, Retrieved from www.en.wikipedia.org access date: 25/08/2007.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Wien
About this paper
Cite this paper
Qi, S., Leung, R., Law, R., Buhalis, D. (2008). A Study of Information Richness and Downloading Time for Hotel Websites in Hong Kong. In: O’Connor, P., Höpken, W., Gretzel, U. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2008. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-77280-5_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-77280-5_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-211-77279-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-211-77280-5