Bakgrund Självständigt arbete Datum: 2013-02-22 Hotell- och bokningssidor på internet är två olika branscher, som både är partners och konkurrenter med varandra. Principen för bokningssidorna är att de jämför priser på olika hotell och rumskategorier för att sedan sälja till lägsta pris till den som bokar. En gemensam nämnare för bokningsföretagen är att de inte gör detta gratis, utan erhåller en avgift per förmedlad rum från hotellen. Syfte Denna litteraturstudie syftar till att undersöka om hotell tjänar på ett samarbete med onlineresebyråer. Metod och material Denna litteraturstudie genomfördes med en grund av vetenskapliga artiklar som publicerats på internet och tryckts i vetenskapliga journaler. Resultat Resultatet av artiklarna visar att det hotell eller den bokningssida på internet som har lägst pris, bäst erbjudande och den mest användarvänliga hemsidan, lockar till sig flest bokande gäster. Diskussion Hotellen och bokningssidorna är beroende av varandra. Hotellen blir exponerade vilket kunde leda till att bokningen genomförs genom hotellets egen hemsida, vilket är målet för hotellkedjorna. Alternativt sker bokningarna på bokningssidorna, vid vilket tillfälle OTA:erna erhåller en kommission. Slutsats Hotellen tjänar på att ingå partnerskap med onlineresebyråerna, då dem ökar antalet bokningar till hotellen. Hotellen skall dock fortsätta med att locka gästerna till att boka via hotellens egna hemsidor. / B-uppsatser

Tidigare forskning kring de två aktörerna hotell och onlineresebyråer har koncentrerats runt intäktsoptimering samt konsumentbeteende gällande omdömen relaterat till onlineresebyråer. Det råder däremot en avsaknad gällande tidigare forskning runt hotellens strategiska marknadsföringsbeslut i och med att de ansluter sig till olika onlineresebyråer. Syftet med studien är att få en insikt i hur hotellen arbetar med sin marknadsföring gentemot onlineresebyråerna. Vidare besvaras frågeställningen om vad effekten blir när hotellen lämnar över delar av sin marknadsföring till onlineresebyråerna. I studien tillämpades ett kvalitativt förhållningssätt där fem telefonintervjuer genomfördes. Resultaten indikerar på att hotellen i studien inkluderar onlineresebyråerna i delar av sina marknadsföringsstrategier och att det i viss bemärkelse kan vara positivt men å andra sidan kan medföra vissa risker för de olika hotellen. / Previous research on the two actors’ hotels and online travel agencies has been concentrated around revenue management as well as consumer behavior regarding ratings related to online travel agencies. There is, however, a lack of research regarding hotels’ strategic marketing decision when joining online travel agencies. The purpose of this study is to explain how hotels approach their marketing strategies in relation to online travel agencies. Furthermore, the paper answers the question; what are the effects for hotels, when handing over part of their marketing to online travel agencies. The study applied a qualitative approach where five telephone interviews were conducted. The results indicate that the hotels in the study include online travel agencies in parts of their marketing strategies, and that in some regards can be positive but on the other hand, can lead to certain risks for the hotels.

Background: It has been shown that people travel much more nowadays than ever before. Since the Internet and the e-commerce have been developed the ability to book trips online has been enabled. There are now two dominant ways of buying trips, online or offline. The survival of traditional travel agencies has been questioned and some thinks that there will be no need for them in the future. Therefore it would be interesting to see who books trips at traditional and online travel agencies.  Purpose: The purpose with this study is to understand which segments that are purchasing travels at traditional travel agencies and online travel agencies by examine demographic, psychographic and behaviouristic segmentation in the region of Jönköping. Further, in the region of Jönköping, examine advantages and disadvantages of buying trips at an online versus offline travel agency.  Method: In order to fulfil the purpose and answer the research questions the authors will use a quantitative method. The quantitative data will be gathered through a questionnaire after pilot studies have been conducted. SPSS 19.0 will be used in order to analyse the data from the questionnaires.  Conclusion: The segment of traditional travel agencies is older people with high income while the segment of online travel agencies is younger people with lower income. Advantages of traditional travel agencies are their ability to provide service, customize a trip and give expert advice. Online travel agencies have its availability, price comparison service and comfortable way to buying trips as their advantages

Nowadays with the development of Internet, there is a shift from offline to online travel agencies. Challenges like customer loyalty go hand in hand with advantages such as fast speed and convenience. This paper aims to identify what are the determining factors that have an impact on customer loyalty to online travel agencies through an empirical study of Expedia, an online travel booking platform. According to the research of previous literature, this paper proposes seven factors that have an influence on customer loyalty in the environment of online travel agencies. Then a new framework is outlined and seven hypotheses are generated to address the research questions that are put forward. This study adopts an online questionnaire, a quantitative strategy, as the method to collect data. After analysis, the results support five outlined hypotheses and two are not supported. Finally, the findings will provide some managerial implications to improve the customer loyalty to Expedia and also be helpful for the whole online travel agency market.

Yes / This paper aims to explore the important qualitative aspects of online user-generated-content that reflects customers’ brand-attitudes. Additionally, the qualitative aspects can help service-providers understand customers’ brand-attitudes by focusing on the important aspects rather than reading the entire review, which will save both their time and effort. We have utilised a total of 10,000 reviews from TripAdvisor (an online-travel-agency provider). This study has analysed the data using statistical-technique (logistic regression), predictive-model (artificial-neural-networks) and structural-modelling technique to understand the most important aspects (i.e. sentiment, emotion or parts-of-speech) that can help to predict customers’ brand-attitudes. Results show that sentiment is the most important aspect in predicting brand-attitudes. While total sentiment content and content polarity have significant positive association, negative high-arousal emotions and low-arousal emotions have significant negative association with customers’ brand attitudes. However, parts-of-speech aspects have no significant impact on brand attitude. The paper concludes with implications, limitations and future research directions.

Background: Promotional cues are commonly applied on online travel agency websites. The most common cues were identified to be scarcity, popularity and pricing, which are said to increase consumers’ perception of scarcity, popularity and price and following enhance consumers’ booking intention. There is an increasing interest in promotional cues’ impact on booking intention in the online booking context, however, the results are not coherent as well as previous studies have looked only into intention to book. By applying the theory of planned behavior model to measure booking intention, new theoretical insights regarding promotional cues and booking intention should be given. Furthermore, this should help hotel suppliers to increase booking intention on the own hotel’s website. Purpose: The purpose is to explain how promotional cues found on online hotel booking sites impact the relationship between (1) perceived scarcity, (2) perceived popularity, (3) perceived price and consumers’ booking intention, by using the theory of planned behavior model. Method: This study has taken a deductive approach with quantitative data collection methods. By using a between-subjects experimental design, a fictional online hotel booking scenario was created. In total, data from 379 respondents were collected with a web-based survey. Thereby, respondents were assigned to six different groups (three treatment groups and three control groups). With conducting a manipulation check, it was identified that the perceived pricing group did not show a significant difference between control group and treatment group, however, perceived scarcity and perceived popularity did. For the analysis a correlation and regression analysis were conducted. Several t tests were conducted to find significant differences between diverse variables. Conclusion: A positive moderate relationship was found between perceived scarcity and booking intention, when applying scarcity cues. Furthermore, implementing popularity cues, led also to a moderate positive relationship indicated between perceived popularity and booking intention, however, the relationship was not as strongly correlated as when applying scarcity cues. Thereby, implementing scarcity and popularity cues is an effective tool to increase bookings, however, only to a small amount. Hence, it is important to also pay attention to the other factors influencing booking intention and simply using the cues as support to increase the number of booking.

Online travel agencies (OTAs) play an important role in the online travel market. OTAs offer various features, rich information, and numerous hotel choices for customers. All these hotel choices, accompanied by detailed information and supported by various website features, are generally beneficial and advantageous for hotel customers. They allow hotel customers to evaluate numerous hotels based on different characteristics, including price, location, amenities, and ratings. However, the reasons why OTA users postpone their booking decisions and switch to other hotel booking channels remain unclear. Therefore, this dissertation aimed to explore the determinants of OTA users' intention to postpone their hotel booking decisions and their intention to switch to other hotel booking channels by developing and testing a conceptual framework based on the integration of stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) framework and information processing theory (IPT). A sequential exploratory mixed-methods approach, comprising two phases (i.e., qualitative and quantitative) was employed as the research design for this dissertation. In the first phase, themes that hold significance in influencing OTA users' intention to postpone their hotel booking decisions and intention to switch to other hotel booking channels were explored by conducting thematic analysis on qualitative data collected from OTA users through three online focus groups. In the second phase, the themes that emerged from the qualitative data analysis were utilized to formulate a quantitative survey instrument for a more in-depth investigation of the research problem. A total of 700 online surveys were collected, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to analyze the quantitative data and test the study hypotheses. The study results revealed that information overload, choice overload, and system feature overload, as stressors, positively influenced strain factors including similarity confusion, ambiguity confusion, time risk, psychological risk, performance risk, privacy risk, emotional exhaustion, decision task difficulty, and untrustworthiness toward OTAs. The results also indicated that similarity confusion, performance risk, emotional exhaustion, decision task difficulty, and untrustworthiness toward OTA, as strain factors, had a positive impact on OTA users' intention to postpone their hotel booking decisions. The results further indicated that ambiguity confusion, time risk, performance risk, decision task difficulty, as strain factors, had a positive impact on OTA users' intention to switch to other hotel booking channels. This dissertation provides valuable theoretical contributions to the existing body of knowledge in the realms of travel, tourism and hospitality industries and offers significant practical implications for OTA operators to generate effective and efficient strategies to be more competitive in the travel market and avoid unwanted consequences.

This thesis deals with the processing of a business plan. It is specifically the implementation of a new web portal aimed at commission sale of travel tours. The aim of this thesis is to build a business plan in order to determine the relevant data for its feasibility and the profitability. This thesis consists of two parts. The first part covers the theoretical definition of a business plan and a description of his specific content. The theoretical part is followed by the second practical part in which they are initially defined specifics related to tourism. Afterwards, the work focuses on the description of the product itself and its competitiveness in the market. The work also paid attention to the analysis of suppliers, consumers, competitors and the current description of the planned marketing activities. The financial part transforms the previous text into a numeric form, which also expresses the need for funds and the overall project profitability.

網際網路問世和知識經濟時代來臨，現代人的生活形態深深受其影響。隨著網際網路觸角延伸到世界各地，上網人數快速增加，將具有共同興趣，但來自不同地域的人連結起來，在越來越多的網路用戶參與所造成的影響下，形成了許多虛擬社群。 Web2.0 概念的出現於2004年，其「網路即為平台」的基礎原則更將這股虛擬社群風潮推向高峰，成為一股不可忽視的網際網路力量。使用者所編織的集體智慧，變成了網際網路資源建立之核心，促使網際網路從以資訊為主的網路連結演變成以人為主的架構。 個案研究對象以台灣最大旅遊業者雄獅旅遊集團作為探討對象，利用研究者在雄獅旅遊集團之自身實習經驗以及與高階主管訪談過程中，得知雄獅旅遊集團在公司旅遊電子商務網站、品牌管理與其外部社群網站操作之實際做法。研究架構則是沿用邱志聖（2010）的4C策略行銷分析，整理出雄獅旅遊網在外顯單位效益成本、資訊搜尋成本、道德危機成本與專屬陷入成本之行銷運用，探究個案如何運用其旅遊電子商務網站經營與消費者行銷建立關係。此外並在外部選取全球成功且具代表性之旅遊電子商務網站與平台—Expedia作為標竿案例，針對該個案公司本身的電子商務網站經營以及其旗下TripAdvisor網站之 Web 2.0應用，作次集資料搜集與整理。Expedia身為美國線上旅遊市場之龍頭代表，背後的成功關鍵就是在整合電子商務網站與社群網站之經營。 在研究最後利用雄獅旅遊所興建平台與Expedia平台之比較與行銷4C分析，提出雄獅旅遊可學習與改善之處，提出其建議與結論。建議部分除包含對雄獅旅遊平台可參考之實際作法外，也試圖提出旅遊業建構電子商務社群網站可考慮之架構與資源分配之原則。 / The modern lifestyle has been intensely affected right after the invention of Internet and the era of knowledge economy. With the Internet usage expended all over the world, the rapid increasing in the number of Internet users will share many common interests. However, due to the fact that they are all from different geographical areas, these huge amounts of Internet users will become participating in the formation of many online virtual communities in order to gather and share their ideas and thoughts. The Web2.0 concept first appeared in 2004, the fundamental principle of “network as platform” makes this trend has a much cleared definition. The collective intelligence that users build became the core of Internet resource. The Internet has transformed from an information-based network to a human based network, from giving one way to multiple ways exchanging. This research mainly focuses on the largest travel agency in Taiwan, Lion Travel Corporation. Utilize the researcher’s internship experience and interviews with the head of E-Commerce department to intensely study the marketing methods that the company employs through Lion Travel’s official website, liontravel.com, in addition to its online brand management and its marketing strategies on the outer virtual community sites such as Facebook and YouTube Channels. The thesis employs Chiu’s (2010) four cost (4C) analysis to examine Lion Travel Corporation online marketing activities via a constructively critical lens. These four costs include external unit costs, information search costs, moral hazard costs and firm-specific assets costs. Moreover, this thesis chooses an international renowned online travel agency Expedia Inc. to set as a benchmarking case study sample for Lion Travel. Expedia Inc. has not only many very successful online e-commerce travel web stores but also established TripAdvisor virtual community to enhance its e-commerce utilities. TripAdvisor is a excellent example in managing collective intelligence, gathering travelers from all over the world to help them building travel industry knowledge. From comparing Lion Travel Corp. and Expedia Inc.’s online marketing strategies utilizing 4C analysis, the thesis has made several notable conclusions for Liontravel.com to imitate. The recommendations include not only some Expedia and TripAdvisor’s website practical methods but also given some advices for resource allocations.

隨著科技的進步和普及，電子商務的發展日益蓬勃，帶動商業模式的多元化，使得電子商務的商品不僅限於實體貨物也包含數位化商品及線上提供服務等電子勞務交易。將跨境電商納入課稅規範已是全球趨勢，日前台灣也已通過並發布針對跨境電子勞務交易之營業稅法修法，明定跨境銷售電子勞務予我國自然人買家之外國業者，應自行或委託報稅之代理人於我國辦理稅籍登記及報繳營業稅，旨在維護租稅公平並掌握稅源。本文擬以文獻探討法、比較研究法及個案研究法，以跨境電商營業人為主體，探討電子勞務交易之營運模式，深入了解業者透過跨境電子商務平台銷售電子勞務在我國目前稅制下之課稅議題，並以國際性之知名訂房網站-Agoda.com進行個案分析。最後針對我國電子勞務課稅現況提出政策之建議。 / Rapid development in technology has resulted in the prosperity of e-commerce and the variety of business models. The products of e-commerce are not only physical commodities but also electronic services like digital products and online services. With the global trend of taxation on cross-border electronic services, Taiwan government has announced an amendment to Value-added and Non-value-added Business Tax. The amendment specifies the tax obligation of cross-border business entities which sells electronic services to domestic individuals shall apply for taxation registration in order to uphold tax fairness and ensure tax revenue for the country. This study discussed the business models of electronic services and its tax issues ,adopting document method, comparative analysis method and case study on Agoda. The last chapter concluded the results from the aforementioned research methods and proposed ways to improve the current tax collection system on cross-border electronic services.