E-Business Adoption, Use, and Value Creation: An Austrian Hotel Study

The paper presents an approach which shows how contextual conditions, like infrastructural, organizational as well as environmental factors, determine e-Business adoption and use, what in turn, positively affects value creation processes in hotel businesses. The research is grounded in Innovation Diffusion Theory and is empirically based on surveys undertaken in the Austrian hotel sector. By referring to Zhu and Kraemer’s (2005) e-Business impact model data is analysed by linear structural equation models and logistic regression. Results show that e-Business adoption and related use intensity decisions in the hotel sector are affected by the availability of a modern ICT system, firm size as well as management’s conviction that core business processes are supported by information technologies and, that tourists and cooperation partners expect latest information technologies. It was further found that online platforms are the most important e-Business application for value creation in the 3-star hotel segment. By contrast, in the 4/5-star hotel segment a property management system, a website with booking functionality and e-mail marketing are crucial e-Business applications for value creation