What are the three best ways to manage e-business successfully in private hotels in Europe and why

Résumé ou Introduction

The world is going online, and the hospitality business is going to follow. Ten years ago
words like e-business, internet or intranet were considered to be specific technical terms. But
within only five years, the Internet changed our private lives and the way of doing business
for many managers. The world is getting connected and our economy is more global than ever
before. All kind of services are available to everybody for a very small amount of money and
only a few clicks away.
According to a survey about e-commerce in the hospitality business done by Arthur Andersen
two years ago (Cline & Warner, 2001), 41% of all hotel employees work with a computer
already and this amount is expected to increase to 51% by 2003. In this respect it was also
ascertained, that America still takes the leading position with 47%, while the rest of the world
lags behind with 37%. Of all employees 28% have internet access, but an increase of around
50% percent is expected over the next few years. Again America is taking the lead with 38%
of all employees connected to the world-wide-web (WWW), but the rest of the world is
expected to catch up in the future.
These are very important figures, as the profitable use of the internet strongly depends on the
common handling of day-to-day technologies in every business. Every company is forced by
the recent developments to take initiatives in the area of e-business. But what does e-business
mean? Faramarz Damanpour (2001) said it “is any net business activity that transforms
internal and external relationships to create value and exploit market opportunities driven by
new rules of the connected economy” (p.18). [...]