By reviewing the literature it is emerges that;
Firstly, the specific literature concerning the effects of ICT on hotels was concentrated in some particular research areas (e.g. competitive advantage), and to the knowledge of the researcher, there limited research on the effects of ICT on marketing performance of hotels.
Although marketing is perhaps the most affected business function from the ICT revolution (O’Connor 1999; Yu and Law 2000; O’Connor and Frew 2002), the research focussing on the relationship between ICT and marketing performance did not receive sufficient attention. By analysing 88 ICT-related research articles within hospitality industry from 1999 to 2008, (Ip et al. 2011) found that only 17% of them were related to marketing. The reason for this, according to Sigala (2003), is that service organisations tend to be less marketing oriented than manufacturing organisations as well as being more function orientated than marketing orientated. While most hotels seemed to have successfully merged ICT into their marketing strategies, the level of commitment appears to be insignificant (Connolly 2000; Leong 2001).
Therefore, Berezina and Cobanoglu (2010) argue that additional research on the topic of ICT’s impact on hotel marketing assists in delineating ICT solutions that hotel management should consider in order to increase guest satisfaction. Moreover, it is important to distinguish which ICT component is the most significant determinant of an eMarketing strategy (Ip et al. 2011). Hudson (2008, p.258) states that; “As tourism markets and the media have grown more complex and fragmented, consumers find themselves in an ever more confusing marketing environment. Tourism marketers must address this situation by conveying a consistent, unified message in all their promotional activities”.
The phenomena of the ICT solutions implicate the ability to shift market dynamics from local into global level. Therefore, the needs to investigate ICT adoption as well as its integration and usage in hospitality marketing models are inherent. From that perspective, this research examines the impact of ICT on marketing performance in Jordanian hotels. First, it is argued that hotels need to raise their awareness of the potential of ICT to improve their marketing performance and to start to integrate it into their practice and strategy. Second, although hotels are different in size, geographical location, and ownership, as well as in their experiences in ICT, sooner or later they will all be aware of the significance of ICT capabilities to increase marketing performance. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to survey the impact of ICT in improving the marketing performance of a hotel firm, in general, and to consider the effect of hotel’s characteristics on ICT adoption.
Secondly, the literature on the marketing performance of hotels focused on certain research areas (e.g. marketing strategy, and guests' satisfaction and loyalty), and, to the knowledge of the researcher, there are few studies that evaluate marketing performance within the hospitality industry.
Marketing performance is one of the key concepts in this thesis. Although it seems to be a simple concept with little disagreement about it, the challenge in defining it clears when one attempts to measure it. Indeed, marketing performance is a dynamic (e.g. Dickson 1996) and multidimensional (e.g. Bonoma and Clark 1988) process. Regularly, performance is considered by its effectiveness and/or efficiency. While the literature covers some measures of marketing performance in hotels (e.g. costumer satisfaction and costumer loyalty), it does not consider the more comprehensive models for marketing performance found in other industries. In order to survive and succeed in the hospitality industry, efforts must be made to improve both guest satisfaction and operational performance through the adoption and use of ICT systems (Jones 1999). By reviewing the relevant, published literature research; the author found that the measurements used to evaluate marketing performance vary according to researchers' individual standpoints and experiences.
Finally, although many developing countries turned to the hospitality industry and tourism as an economic development strategy shortly after achieving political stability (Lin et al. 2010), nearly all of the research studies about ICT’s effects on hotels and the marketing performance of hotels have been conducted in developed countries
Many ICT tools have been implemented in the tourism industry in both USA and Europe for more than four decades (Ma et al. 2003), therefore, the majority of research on the effects of ICT on the tourism hospitality was mainly conducted in these states (Sigala 2003; Sirirak et al. 2011). Sirirak et al. (2011, p.36) states that “studies in a developing country context are limited in number, and research in this context would be useful to hotel management as the tourism and hospitality industry in these countries, especially in Asia, is growing rapidly”.
Generally, the literature on the effects of ICT on hotels did not consider Jordan as a case study. Given the fact that Jordan is considered a tourism destination and hospitality industry is significant sector for Jordan economy. The relationships between ICT systems availability, integrations and usage marketing performance in Jordanian hotels along with the factors that affect these relationships are the gaps that this research seeks to address. With this in mind, the present research is based on the context of the hospitality industry in Jordan, using data collected through a survey on the availability, connectivity and the usage of ICT in hotels.
These identified gaps in in the literature will feed into the aim and design of this research project as it will presented in the next chapter. The aim of this research is to achieve an in- depth understanding of relationship between ICT and the marketing performance of Jordanian hotels. This chapter examine the broad literature on the topic of ICT and marketing performance in the hospitality industry. Next chapter discusses the theoretical framework and hypotheses development for this research.