By Lorenzo Cantoni, Vittoria Passini and Marco Faré

What are booking engines’ main functionalities? How can booking engines sound as the welcoming voice of a receptionist?

A research laboratory of the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, Switzerland) webatelier.net, (www.webatelier.net) conducted a research to investigate contents and functionalities of the main hotel chains' booking engines worldwide.

During the study, called “Booking Engines for Hotel Chains”, 162 international Hotel Chains have been analysed in order to improve the quality and the efficiency of the services provided by hotel booking engines. The research aimed at measuring the interactivity of reservation systems through relevant practices.

Results give a contribution to the hotel management in finding new solutions to better design and increase the online business.

Considering that the study received a strong attention by the academic community, it will be presented at ENTER2011 (The 18th International Conference on Information Technology and Travel&Tourism – http://www.enter2011.org) and that it will be published in the proceedings.

The study can be viewed on http://www.webatelier.net/research/reports/white-paper-booking-engines-for-hotel-chains.

About the authors

Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni is scientific director of webatelier.net, professor and vicedean of the faculty of communication sciences at the Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, Switzerland). He graduated in Philosophy and holds a PhD in Education and Linguistics. He is scientific director of the laboratories webatelier.net, NewMinE Lab (New Media in Education Lab) and of eLab (eLearning Lab). His research interests range from eTourism to eLearning, up to eGovernment and Usability.

Vittoria Passini, has graduated from the Master in International Tourism program at the Università della Svizzera italiana with a thesis on online booking engines for hotel chains. She has a work experience in the hotel sector, as well as research experience at the webatelier.net.

Marco Faré, researcher, holds a degree in communication sciences, obtained in 2003 at the Università della Svizzera italiaitaliana and has collaborated with the webatelier.net since same year. His field of interest is the online communication and his PhD research is focused on the visualization of search engines' results.