Assessing email responsiveness: The case of hotels in Malaysia

• Main Authors: Razalli, Mohd Rizal, Mohd Yusof, Mohd Fadil
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2005
• Subjects: HD28 Management. Industrial Management
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/10520/1/MR4.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/10520/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

The advancement of Information Technology (IT) has given tremendous effects on hotel industry.IT has been perceived as the competitive weapon to survive in the intense competition in the hotels business. As a result, in 2003, 63% of hotels listed by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism of Malaysia provided their e-mail as a medium of communication for its online patrons.Despite the successful technology initiation among hotels in Malaysia, the effectiveness of implementation of technology in relation to customer service still remains unknown.Do these hoteliers responsively reply the customer e-mail? The aim of the study is to investigate the quality aspect of the online customer service in Malaysian hotel industry. In 2004, 200 hotels with the e-mail addresses were sent a typical room query and their responses were recorded to examine their e-mail quality.Even though, the hotels performed well for each quality variable, the overall finding showed that the chance that a guest would receive a quality reply was only at 12 out of 200 or 6%.Practical and theoretical contributions are also discussed in this paper.