Abstract
Registering appropriate domain names, such as Hilton.com for Hilton hotels, has become essential for companies to engage customers on the Web. By establishing if leading hotel brands have registered trade names as domain names in generic and country domains, this study benchmarks current industry practices. Diffusion of innovations theory helps investigate the relationship between three — size, market sector and country of headquarters — organisational characteristics and both domain name adoption and implementation. Findings indicate that hotels perform well in registering generic and country domains. Academically, country of headquarters and brand size but not market sector related significantly to domain name adoption. Brand size, and to a lesser extent country headquarters, related significantly to domain name implementation. Finally, the results showed a leapfrog effect whereby hotels that lagged in the adoption of domain names often led in the implementation of domain names.
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O’Connor, P., Murphy, J. (2010). Hotel Domain Name Adoption and Implementation. In: Gretzel, U., Law, R., Fuchs, M. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2010. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-99407-8_1
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