Adoption and use of E-commerce by small businesses in the UK tourism industry

Warnaby, G; White, Gareth; Prabhakar, Guru Prakash; Abd Razak, A

Abstract

This paper presents a quantitative study of 90 small tourism businesses in the South West of the United Kingdom. It examines the factors that influence the adoption and use of e-commerce and the types of e-business that these organisations undertake. It confirms the influencing factors that have been identified in previous research in similar small to medium sized enterprises that determine business decisions to adopt and use e-commerce. It also finds that there was virtually no strategic use of e-commerce but that all organisations that were studied relied upon web-based activities in one form or another.
Finally we present a five point list of recommendations targeted at owner-managers of small tourism businesses to direct their future e-commerce strategies.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Entrepreneurship and Firms in the New Economy
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008
• Deposit Date: May 4, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 15, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: ecommerce, entreprensurship, SME
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1022668
• Contract Date: Nov 15, 2016