Escala Webqual na avaliação de websites de hotéis do Porto

• Autor(es): Teixeira, Andreia ; Fonseca, Manuel ; Castro, Luísa ; Garcia, Jorge ; Igreja, Carla ; Costa-Santos, Cristina
• Data: 2018
• Origem: European Journal of Applied Business and Management
• Tipo de Documento: Artigo científico
• Idioma: Inglês

Descrição

Research Goals: The tourism sector has been suffering many marketing and processual changes due to the widespread use of the web and its tools. In this new reality, hotel websites represent important tools, namely as exclusive communication channel. The main aim of this study is to measure the agreement of experts from distinct fields of expertise in the qualitative evaluation of websites, from hotels located in Porto, Portugal.Methodology: Thirty hotel websites distributed by five categories were selected. Three experts from distinct fields of expertise: informatics, communication and quality, rated websites applying Webqual, a website quality measure tool. To assess the disagreement between observers, the IBMD (Information-based measure of disagreement) was used.Results: Disagreement (IBMD) was high for the four constructs of the questionnaire: Usefulness (0,32); Ease of Use (0,36); Entertainment (0,48); and Complementary Relationship (0,46). We observed an increase in the disagreement by category as the number of stars decreased. In average, the quality expert attributes the highest scores while the communication expert assigns the lowest ones.Originality/Value: To our knowledge there is no coincident exploratory study. Previous applications of Webqual have focused on assessing the factors that make users revisit a hotel website. In contrast, the major contribution of the present study is to measure the agreement between experts from distinct expertise fields in the evaluation of hotel websites using Webqual. Our results highlight the relevance of employing a multidisciplinary team when designing/constructing a website. Keywords: Webqual; hotel website; communication; informatics; quality.