Original Scientific Article
Utilization Analysis of Slovenian Hotel Websites
Mitja Petelin
Vocational College of Hospitality and Tourism Maribor, Slovenia
mitja.petelin@vsgt-mb.si
Dejan Križaj
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies Turistica, Slovenia
dejan.krizaj@fts.upr.si
The purpose of the article is to get an insight into the content of thewebsites of Slove-
nian four- and five-star hotels and, based on the set criteria, to determinewhichweb-
sites are more utilized than others. We defined the utilization criteria and analysed
all four and five-star hotels in Slovenia using data clustering analysis. The content
of the websites, analysed in 2017, at the first glance seems diverse, but when com-
paring their content, we concluded that there are nomajor statistical differences. An
important discovery of the research falls on the security ofmost of the analysedweb-
sites – it is very flawed and sometimesmisleading. The potential for interactivity and
gamification remains untapped despite the various recommendations of experts and
academics.
Keywords: website, hotel, Slovenian hotel websites, security
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.13.193-200
Introduction
The consumer decision-making process in hotel se-
lection is compromised by many different factors; one
of them is how the consumer receives information
(Zabukovec & Čivre, 2012). The latter remains a great
challenge for the hospitality industry and we can per-
ceive it as a hotel website among other things.
Website research is widespread and there are sev-
eral different approaches focusing on hotel character-
istics and utilization, benchmarks of website design
andmarketing, conceptualising website quality, devel-
oping a performance indicator of hotel websites, us-
ability and evaluation, etc.
Website characteristics as an important factor of
measurement and development of appropriate in-
struments (leveraging structural equation modelling)
were discussed in detail by Schmidt et al. (2008). More
revealing was an article of Jeong et al. (2003) which
came to the conclusion (data was collected using elec-
tronic surveys) that the website quality is an impor-
tant antecedent of information satisfaction. The re-
search results suggested that hoteliers should adopt
a more strategic approach to the Internet, preparing
the ground for direct contact with customers. Under-
standing hotel websites via strategies pursued by hotel
websites in correlation of the hotel size and the website
proved that significant relationships were not identi-
fied (Escobar-Rodríguez & Carvajal-Trujillo, 2013).
Focusing on performance among the luxurious,
mid-priced, and budget hotel websites revealed signif-
icant differences among them (Chung & Law, 2003),
which was further supported with research in web-
site attribute utilization and effectiveness for hotels of
various class levels (using the Star Rating system ap-
proach) (Musante et al., 2009).
Research with a focus on marketing showed that
hotels are not utilizing the internet to its full potential
and effectively e-marketing their hotels regardless of
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 2, December 2020 | 193
Mitja Petelin and Dejan Križaj Utilization Analysis of Slovenian Hotel Websites
the hotel type (Baloglu & Peckan, 2006). Approach-
ing the problem via benchmarking and analyzation
(over 200 different websites criteria) revealed signif-
icant differences in website tools across hotel category
and size, but no differences across geographic or lin-
guistic region (Schegg et al., 2002). The geographical
aspect could be further discussed since Ping-Ho et al.
(2013) used content analysis and the eMica model, re-
alising that hotels in Asia hadmore features than those
on other continents.
Usability as a very important factor of a hotel web-
site was researched using a heuristic technique and
showed no significant difference among luxury, mid-
priced, and economy hotels (Yeung & Law, 2006), but
this does not mean that mid-priced and economy ho-
tels are more informative than luxury ones, since class
cluster analysis, bivariate analysis and the Chi-Square
methodological approach proved otherwise (Díaz and
Koutra, 2013).
Establishing a link between quality and profitabil-
ity of websites was established by Yang et al. (2014)
via two stage dea (ccr and bcc) methodology, but
it was concluded that it is difficult to obtain detailed fi-
nancial information from individual companies, there-
fore such a research approach should be reserved to
organisations that have direct access to financial data.
The presented theoretical and practical insights
have enabled us to consider an appropriate model and
taxonomy for evaluating websites of Slovenian four
and five-star hotels. Our goal was to get insights into
thewebsites and to determinewhichwebsites aremore
utilized than others on the basis of the set criteria. We
were also looking for research outcomes that would
give useful insights for practitioners. For achieving
those goals, we had to:
• create the utilization taxonomy,
• collect information about all Slovenian four- and
five-stars hotels and their websites,
• try to determine which Slovenian hotels have the
most utilized websites.
Methodology
We decided to use and adapt a methodological ap-
proach developed by Križaj et al. (2014) as a part of the
scientific article ‘A Tool for Measurement of Innova-
tionNewness andAdoption and Tourism Firms,’ com-
bining a quantitative and qualitative methodological
approach. The model combines three research prob-
lems, (1)measuring newness levels and the adoption of
tourism innovations, (2) developing taxonomy allow-
ing the calculation of correct innovation newness lev-
els and (3) statistical analysis of innovation adoption
in tourism destinations. The advantage of the model
is its flexibility and architecture, which enables the ad-
dition of various elements of a tourist company, in our
example, of a website.
Their basic mechanism originates from the in-
troduction of all the necessary descriptive attributes
of innovation in tourism companies. They created a
database of the adopted innovations and classified and
calculated similarities between companies through a
data clustering approach. Clusters were represented by
a dendrogram in which individual companies stood
out based on their more innovative products and pro-
cesses. The authors collected the data of 351 tourist
companies in Slovenia in the two most widely spread
daily Slovenian newspapers, the most widely read
weekly business newspaper, five professional tourism
journals, three portalsmanaged by the SlovenianTour-
ist Board, and the national tv web portal. Data col-
lection covered publications from 1 January 2007 to 1
June 2010. The first step in the processing of data was
(1) an appropriate description of the tourist compa-
nies’ adopted innovations, by means of which (2) the
differences between the companies were defined, fol-
lowed by (3) calculating, displaying and analysing the
differences.
Taxonomy was an important part of the research
model since it is the key to the correct calculation of
the differences between the adopted innovations in
tourism companies. The flexible development of the
research information input interface allowed ongoing
reorganisation or reclassification of the innovation at-
tributes they have used and eventually changed during
the taxonomy scheme optimisation process and data
entry. The data, organised with the help of the devel-
oped taxonomy, enabled the statistical analysis of the
introduction of innovations in tourist companies.
The presented approach was reused in our paper in
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Mitja Petelin and Dejan Križaj Utilization Analysis of Slovenian Hotel Websites
Table 1 Website Utilization Taxonomy
Category Subcategory Further subcategories
Experience Fulfilment On-line booking, sliding photos, high quality photos, hotel video, 3d panoramic
view, brochure, website search, etc.
Personalisation Changing the colour of the website, costumisation of the website.
Gamification Games, sweepstakes, quiz, etc.
Information Feedback and
support for users
Confirmation messages, calendar of hotel activities, faq, live chat, check-in and
check-out information, web forums, history of the hotel, newsletter, etc.
Contact information E-mail, telephone, location, fax, contact form, Google Maps or similar, Skype
Security Safe payment systems (https).
Multimedia and
interactivity
Attractive graphics, sounds, videos, gifs, animations, smart devices applications, etc.
Multilingualism en, de, ru, it, hr, etc.
Marketing Advertising ‘Best Price’ guarantee, Green Globe Certificate, Congress Star, Zlati sejalec 2010,
Trip Advisor Travelers Choice 2015, special hotel offers and packages, etc.
Social media Share page option, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest, blog, etc.
Loyalty programmes Kempinski discovery, ihg rewards club, le club accord hotels, best western awards,
etc.
ota’s Booking.com, Tripadvisor, Expedia, Agoda, Hotels.com, etc.
Destination Weather Weather forecast, temperature, extraordinary weather conditions
Events Festivals, conferences, symposium, visits of important persons, calendar of local
events, etc.
Transport Road conditions, public transport, nearby airports, taxi, other forms of transport
Sights History and or description of destinations, attractions, natural and cultural
specialties
Local products Gastronomic local specialties, special crafts, special products and services
order to determine which websites of Slovenian four-
and five-stars hotels aremore utilized than others. The
main difference in our case is the different content we
were analysing: adoption of different types of websites’
content. As in the case of Križaj et al. (2014), we also
used a cluster analysis technique (Ferligoj, 1988). Clus-
ter analysis is a task of grouping a set of objects in such
a way that objects in the same group are more similar
to those in other groups (Gan et al., 2007).
Our taxonomy consists of nominal variables or uti-
lization categories, which we defined in Table 1. We
merged some of them into groups based on similarity.
Each category can have several levels of subcategories.
We have chosen the ones that we can objectively mea-
sure. In solving the problem of grouping we also had
to use intuition to narrow down the possible choices
and options as recommended by Ferligoj (1988).
We used a hierarchical joining method in order
to present the groups in the dendrogram (Ferligoj,
1988), created based on the Jaccard index matrix of
differences between the websites. The Jaccard’s index
(sometimes called the Jaccard similarity coefficient)
compares the similarity and variety of data sets (in
our case, tree leaves, since every website is presented
as a tree of its utilization categories and subcategories).
Jaccard’s index is the ratio of the number of common
tree leaves divided by the number of all common leaves
and all the different leaves on two trees (Jaccard, 1912).
By calculating the distances between all pairs of hotel
websites, we got a matrix of distances (a comparison
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 2, December 2020 | 195
Mitja Petelin and Dejan Križaj Utilization Analysis of Slovenian Hotel Websites
of sequences) that shows the levels of similarities be-
tween the trees.
To determine the taxonomy for website utilization
categories and subcategories, we have largely used
the article ‘A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making
model to evaluate the hotel website’ of the authors Ak-
incilar and Dagdeviren from 2014. They created an
advisory board composed of academics, businessmen
and experts to determine categories. The purpose of
the board was to identify and evaluate categories col-
lected from various publications that affect the quality
of the website. Academics were selected from a variety
of disciplines such as tourism, engineering, manage-
ment, and the economy, and experts from successful
hotels were added to the mix.
Akincilar and Dagdeviren (2014) identified cate-
gories focusing on (A) user, (B) technology, (C) mar-
keting, (D) security, and (E) other, where they in-
cluded everything they could not include in the cat-
egories A–D. After reviewing Akincilar and Dagde-
viren’s categories for the purpose of our research, we
have made some modifications to reflect the actual
website content in our study dataset.
The categories in Table 1, representing our web-
site utilization taxonomy approach, are based on the
mbsc (‘modified balanced scorecard’) scheme and
Akincilar and Dagdeviren’s (2014) categories, enhan-
ced with insights and findings from Yeung and Law
(2004), Ping-Ho et al. (2013), Yang et al. (2014), Díaz
and Koutra (2013) and Bastida and Huan (2014).
The category experience is based on how the user
experiences the hotelwebsite and consists of three sub-
categories (fulfilment, personalisation and gamifica-
tion). Fulfilment is seen as the option of online book-
ing, sliding photos and their quality, panoramic and
3d views, brochure, website search features and other
similar aspects.
The information category is directed towards how
hotel information is presented and how detailed it ac-
tually is (does it include feedback and support, contact
information, security in terms of online payment and
https protocol, language support and interactivity).
The marketing category compromises features that
could be described as advertising (different certifi-
cates, recognitions, special offers and packages), so-
cial media presence, different loyalty programmes and
presence on different Online Travel Agencies (book-
ing.com, hotels.com, etc.).
The destination category is more focused on the
destination itself including weather, events, transport,
sightseeing opportunities and local products.
Results
We obtained a list of 346 Slovenian hotels, as available
on June 4, 2017, from the eCategorization web registry
(www.slovenia.info). Out of 130 four- and five-star ho-
tels we found in the list we excluded four hotels that
were closed or their website was not working on the
selected day. The survey sample therefore covers 126
hotels (n = 126), of which 116 are four-star hotels and
10 are five-star hotels.
A more in-depth presentation of the sample is as
follows:
• Number of hotels in each of the Slovenian statis-
tical regions: 23 Gorenjska, 5 Goriška, 10 South-
East Slovenia, 1 Koroška, 23 Obalno-Kraška, 16
Osrednjeslovenska, 10 Podravska, 8 Pomurska, 4
Posavska, 2 Primorsko-Notranjska, 24 Savinjska.
• Superior: 32 yes, 93 no.
• Hotel type: 20mountain, 7 castle/mansion/estate,
6 gaming, 1 cave, 10 lake, 29 city, 20 seaside, 34
spa/thermal.
• Hotel chains: 3 Best Western Premier, 2 Euro-
tas hoteli, 1 Marriott Four Points by Sheraton, 7
hit/hit Alpinea, 1 Hotel Lek, 2 Hotel Sava Ro-
gaška, 3Hoteli Bernardin, 1 ihg/Intercontinental
Hotels & Resorts, 6 Istrabenz turizem, 3 jgz
Brdo, 2 Relais & Châteaux, 2 Remisens Hotels &
Villas, 3 Rimske terme, 9 Sava turizem, 2 Terme
Dobrna, 9 TermeKrka, 5 TermeMaribor, 2 Terme
Olimia, 2 Thermana, 4 Union hoteli, 4 Unior.
After categorisation of all 126 hotels and running
data clustering analysis we got one statistically signif-
icant cluster and two trees that do not belong to it.
These two websites had the least characteristics or fea-
tures that we have categorised (Hotel 002 had 20 and
hotel 054 had 9 characteristics. The average of charac-
teristics of all hotels is 30.7). Despite the high level of
196 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 2, December 2020
Mitja Petelin and Dejan Križaj Utilization Analysis of Slovenian Hotel Websites
similarity of all other hotels in the statistically signifi-
cant cluster, we looked more closely into the five most
diverse sub-clusters 1–5.
Cluster 1
The cluster 1 websites are Grand Hotel Toplice Bled,
Hotel Park, Hotel Golf, Grand Hotel Primus, Ho-
tel Izvir, Hotel Radin, Hotel Livada Prestige, Hotel
Ajda and Hotel Termal. All hotels are owned by the
company Sava Turizem, d. d., which has a general
website template for all of their hotels. There are no
significant differences between these websites, only
minor alterations (for example a special offer or a
prize/recognition that a hotel in the chain has, and
not others), which is no surprise.
Cluster 2
The websites of cluster 2 are Hotel Krka, Hotel Šmar-
jeta, Hotel Svoboda, Hotel Kristal, Hotel Vital, Hotel
Sport, Hotel Balnea and Hotel Vitarium. All of the ho-
tels are owned by the company Terme Krka, which,
similar to Sava Turizem, d. d., has a general website for
all of their hotels except Grand Hotel Otočec, which
has its own website structure and content. Neverthe-
less, the calculated difference was small.
Cluster 3
Cluster 3 sites belong to three different hotel chains:
• Hotel Sava Rogaška (Hotel Zagreb, Grand Hotel
Sava),
• Rimske terme (Hotel Zdraviliški dvor,Hotel Rim-
ski dvor, Hotel Natura, Hotel Sofijin dvor),
• Unior (Hotel Vital, Hotel Atrij, Hotel Planja).
The reason is the considerable generic characteris-
tic of their chosen websites’ structure.
Cluster 4
Cluster 4 sites belong to two hotel chains:
• hit/hit Alpinea (Hotel Kompas, Ramada Hotel
& Suites, Ramada Resort),
• TermeMaribor (Hotel Piramida, Hotel Habakuk,
Hotel Bolfenk, Hotel Arena, Hotel Bellevue).
There is also no major difference between the abo-
ve-mentioned hotel websites. It again seems that hotel
websites are very similar in spite of their diverse own-
ership.
Cluster 5
Cluster 5 sites belong to two hotel chains:
• Istrabenz Turizem (Hotel Apollo, Mind Hotel
Slovenia, Hotel Mirna, Hotel Neptun, GrandHo-
tel Portorož, Hotel Riviera),
• Terme Olimia (Hotel Breza, Hotel Sotelia).
Again, there are nomajor differences between them. It
is more than obvious that hotel chains have standard-
ised websites when it comes to content.
Discussion
We have selected a set of criteria that define the uti-
lization of hotel websites through various sources and
literature and prepared an extensive list of four- and
five-star Slovenian hotels and their websites, and pro-
cessed data using developed taxonomy and existing
data clustering methodology, which, at the end, pro-
vided us with relatively generic data. Hotel websites
seem much different at first, but after comprehensive
research and in-depth analysis, we can draw a con-
clusion that they are very similar. There are no ma-
jor and statistically significant differences between the
analysed websites. The presented research was exten-
sive since taxonomy development and categorisation
of 126 hotels was time-consuming.
Although the initial quest gave no other statistically
significant answer than that the hotels’ website utiliza-
tion in Slovenia is very uniform, several other findings
were gathered through the analysis and categorisation
of the used (and missing) websites’ functions divided
into three areas: security, gamification, and interactiv-
ity and multimedia.
Security
The biggest and most interesting conclusion is the
challenging security of Slovenian four- and five-star
hotel websites. Security is a big part of tourism and
must be upheld on all levels, not to mention the sen-
sitivity of the relationship between security, human
rights, pleasure, discretion, and integrity (Mekinc &
Bončina, 2006, p. 14).
Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 2, December 2020 | 197
Mitja Petelin and Dejan Križaj Utilization Analysis of Slovenian Hotel Websites
When booking a room, tourists submit a lot of per-
sonal information (name, surname, contact, address,
phone number, gender, bank details, etc.). The https
url address gives us muchmore security than http.
Our research showed that, in the time window of our
research from 26 June 2017 to 2 October 2017, 62 ho-
tels (49 of all analysed hotels) did not use the https
protocol. The situation is serious and one would ex-
pect that this kind of security malfunction would be
spotted in smaller private hotels. But it is the opposite.
Smaller hotels often use booking systems for online
travel agencies (for example, booking.com) that are in-
stalled as plug-ins on the site and have state-of-the-art
security protocols. Bigger Slovenian hotel chains, that
were mostly included in our research, develop their
own booking engines that, as shown, lacked appropri-
ate security in almost half of the cases in 2018.
On the positive side and due to the European Data
Protection Regulation (gdpr), effective from 25 May
2018, and the Slovenian Personal Data Protection Act
(Jadek & Pensa, 2019), the security situation has chan-
ged a fewmonths after our research. On 14 April 2018,
we re-checkedmost of the analysed hotel websites and
foundthat they have changed their booking sites to
https, confirming the need for systematic and regu-
larly updated safety and security legislation in highly
digitalised tourism.
Reviewing the security of hotel website booking
systems showed that on 29May 2020 the vast majority
of the analysed websites were using https protocol
when making a reservation but approximately 18 of
the hotel websites landing pages (some of the websites
are not accessible any more) are still using the vulner-
able and outdated http protocol.
Gamification
Gamification can be understood as an activity that
combines the mechanisms of games and prizes in or-
der to motivate users and thus increase the customers’
interest in the hotel and consequent loyalty (Lucassen
& Jansen, 2014). A good example is Starwood Hotels
and Resorts, which linked its loyalty programme with
Foursquare. In this way, the guests collected points
that could be redeemed for special services. Addition-
ally, the ‘ambassador’ (‘the spg Mayor’) was selected
on a monthly basis, encouraging them to share their
experience and advice, thereby increasing their virality
(Mashable, 2011). In 2011, the InterContinental Hotels
Group (ihg) introduced the gamification approach
with the ‘Win It in a Minute’ incentive, allowing users
to compete for free points for ihg’s Priority Club. In
the first two weeks, users played the game 100,000
times and earnedmore than 100 million points. In the
game, there were five questions related to travel, which
had to be answered in a limited time (InterContinen-
tal Hotels Group, 2011). Both presented examples are
considered to be very successful, as they have achieved
very good results and have increased brand loyalty and
visibility.
Gamification features on Slovenian four- and five-
star hotel websites were totally ignored during the
time of the presented research. Even the simple fea-
tures such as sweepstakes were rare, not to mention
more elaborate approaches. There were only 36 four-
and five-star hotel websites (28.5) that had some sort
of sweepstakes. We must emphasise that these were
very simple approaches that can be understood as a
very simple gamification process (for example: send
an email address and participate in a prize game). Per-
haps we can connect the lack of the gamification func-
tions in the analysed hotel websites with the smaller
size of the Slovenian hospitality market.
Interactivity and Multimedia
The definition of interactivity can be understood as
the extent to which users can participate in changing
the shape and content in real time (Steuer, 1992). Im-
portant elements of interactivity are two-way commu-
nication, simultaneity and control (Mollen & Wilson,
2010). The consistency refers primarily to the ability of
the site to quickly provide response or feedback (Yoo
et al., 2010). The possibility of control is understood as
the possibility that the user can choose the time, con-
tent and sequence of communication (Dholakia et al.,
2000). In addition to the above-mentioned basic fea-
tures of interactivity, there is also a possibility of socia-
bility, which allows users to connect with other peo-
ple (chat channels, blogs, online social networks, etc.)
(Macias, 2003).
Our taxonomy categories covered the usage ofmul-
198 | Academica Turistica, Year 13, No. 2, December 2020
Mitja Petelin and Dejan Križaj Utilization Analysis of Slovenian Hotel Websites
timedia and interactivity of Slovenian four- and five-
star hotel websites. We found that most hotel websites
have plug-ins for various online social networks (some
more, others less), and some also used blogs, which
largely acted as marketing announcements of various
campaigns. We analysed which websites have attrac-
tive graphics, sounds, videos, gifs, animations, web
applications for mobile devices and videos. We found
that only a few websites included sounds or music,
and attractive animation. 21 hotels had a virtual tour
of the premises and only one had a bird’s eye perspec-
tive of the whole property facilities allowing visitors
interactivity (Pule Estate). gifs and animations were
not found on any hotel website, and only 7 hotels had
videos portraying more than just the hotel’s property.
The development of applications for hotel mobile
devices demands a high level of experience person-
alisation, conducting effective dialogue and providing
sufficient resources to customers in order to facilitate
their value creation process (Lei et al., 2019). Such a
process could be a very expensive endeavour, so it is
understandable that only hotels of major international
chains can usually afford it, which was confirmed in
the study (only one hotel in Ljubljana had it). Another
special feature found in our dataset was a hotel with
their own application informing guests about the ski
slopes situation in the vicinity. With all the presented
Interactivity andMultimedia findingswe can conclude
that the area of interactivity of the hotel website in
Slovenia has a lot of development potential.
Conclusion
Our research provides an overview of Slovenian four
and five-star hotels’ characteristics and contents of
their websites for the year 2017. The methodology and
sample of 126 hotel websites provided us with little sta-
tistically significant differences, but revealed a lack of
interactivity and multimedia, gamification leverages
and, foremost, weak protection of user personal data.
The latter seems to be the biggest revelation. Results
of this study are therefore a valuable resource of infor-
mation for Slovenian hoteliers in order to review the
most common weakness and opportunities. Further
research could reassess the condition of the sample
in order to see if hoteliers acted accordingly with the
gdpr (General Data Protection Regulation) require-
ments. Another research opportunity could be more
detailed analysis of website interactivity.
Further recommendations to the Slovenian hotel
industry would be to focus more on digital transfor-
mation (blending physical and digital), mobile appli-
cations and data driven customer experience. The lat-
ter could be described as a transformation trend and
unavoidable future of the hotel industry and customer
experience.
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