Smartphone's Application Adoption Benefits Using Mobile Hotel Reservation System (MHRS) among 3 to 5-star City Hotels in Malaysia

Abstract The explosion of technology in hotel industry has promoted the appearance of adoption of Smartphone's Application as part of hotels new marketing strategy. Hotels annually spend a huge portion of investment on maintaining this Smartphone's application benefits to their guests but the application is still questionable, probably due to the application is still new in Malaysia. Thus, the benefits of Smartphone's Application should be carefully designed by hoteliers in acquiring new as well as existing guests to their hotel. This study draws on in-depth interviews of 12 hotel executives from either Marketing or Information Technology (IT) department to investigate the benefit structures of this Smartphone's application of each hotel. It aims to compare and analyze the taxonomical benefits of the Smartphone's application offered by six (6) hotels ranging from 3 to 5 star city hotels in Malaysia. The recorded tapes and transcripts derived from the interviews were repeatedly reviewed, coded and summarized into categories.

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