The Role of Advanced Information Technologies in Decision-making: Applying on a Sample of Egyptian Hotels

Abstract

Nowadays, the increasing evolution in information technology field and the increasing use of these information technologies create more information and change the way both business is done and how decisions are taken. Thus, whereas hotel industry is an information-intensive industry, so, hotels have to keep pace with this rapid evolution and seek to adopt the advanced information technologies that improving the decision making process. This research was conducted with the aim of examining the impact of advanced information technologies (ITs) on decision making, so the research focus on the most prominent information technologies related to the operations of front-office and back-office in hotel industry. The problem of this research is summarized in the absence of the related literature in these subject concerning to the Egyptian hotels, as well as the lack of hotel managers and employees awareness of the optimal utilization of information technologies, in addition to the shortage in implementing the most advanced ITs in Egyptian hotels although they are implemented in some of the largest global chains. So, an organized interviews were conducted with 90 of four and five-star hotel managers in three Egyptian cities, Cairo, Sharm-Elshiekh and Hurghada, to investigate the impact of the implemented ITs on decision making, in addition to determine which of the advanced ITs are implemented in the Egyptian hotels and which are not implemented, as well as determine the differences between managers‟ perceptions toward the study variables according to the hotel degree. The results revealed that the advanced ITs significantly affect the decision making process. As well as, it also revealed that both for and five-star hotels approximately implement the same information technologies and both of them do not implement the most advanced ITs such as; (robots, virtual reality and self-service kiosks), as well as the awareness of five-star hotel managers differ from four-star hotel managers toward the contribution of advanced ITs in the decision making process.