Understanding the Drivers and Consequences of Trust Toward Hotel Websites Under Different Cultural Contexts

Abstract

The main aim of this study is to develop a model that links guests' characteristics, hotel characteristics, website infrastructure, interactions, perceived website trust, and the guest intentions to book hotels online. The present study adopted a positivist research philosophy with a quantitative method to assess the suggested model and the model was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results show that perceived ease of use, service quality and reputation are the most influential determinants of perceived website trust for Egyptian consumers. While at the same time, perceived usefulness, service quality, and satisfaction are the most influential determinants of perceived website trust for the UK consumers. Furthermore, the findings of group comparison analysis assert that the strength of perceived usefulness of the UK customers is significantly stronger than that of Egyptian customers. Moreover, perceived website trust has a stronger influence on guests' intention to book hotel online for the UK sample than for the Egyptian sample.