The rampant globalization has triggered a major face lift in hospitality industry in India. The statistics given by World Travel Organization clearly indicated India to receive 125 million tourists by 2015. The country is geared up to have more hotels of all categories to accommodate the ever growing number of tourists. It also requires access to talented pool of personnel at all level for smooth running of the show. This growth in hospitality sector has led to sharp increase in the number of hotel management institutions offering quality education. Various courses of different durations and intensity are taught at Industry Integrated Hotel Management Institutes (HMIs), Central Government IHMs, State Government IHMS, Private Institutes of Hotel Management and Government Universities offering Hotel Management Programs. However, with innumerable colleges coming up each day, it becomes painstaking to pick the good ones out of the lot. Website of an institute plays a decisive role for the prospective students to opt for the right institute. The educational institutes have also become aware of the strategic importance of websites in dissemination of information through integration of various technologies and information from college websites in evaluating the institution. The information provided by the educational institutions suffices the information needs of prospective students, current students, parents, applications software.

A research study by Tucciarone [1] also confirmed that the students rely upon the faculty, alumni and other stakeholders. Dahiya and Duggal [2] in their research study also opine that the educational institutes should provide reams of information services in a way that makes everything easy to explore. The website of an institution not only attracts the prospective students to take admissions or fulfills the information needs of current students but also helps an institute to globally compete with other institutes. This makes it imperative for the educational institutes including HMIs to have attractive, interactive, user-friendly and academically effective websites.

In the previous research studies, Dahiya & Duggal [3] analyzed various informative features present on the websites of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India to evaluate the website performance from Technical, User-Friendliness, Website Attractiveness and Academic Effectiveness Perspectives. Owing to the tough competition offered by these HMIs, the present research study conducts comparative analysis of the performance of the websites of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Govt. IHMs and State Govt. IHMs in India to find out the strength and weakness of the sample websites. The findings shall be beneficial for the webmasters, administrators and other stake holders to overcome the limitations and improve the efficiency of their websites.

The significant growth of Hotel Management education in India is marked by the opening of large number of HMIs offering hotel management education at various levels. It has intensified the competition to such a quantum that has necessitated to deeply analyzing the websites of the HMIs since the information given on the website of any educational institute is the precursor to a decision to visit the campus. Earlier research studies have already concluded that the students bank on information like majors, cost, and ranking of school, size and location from college websites in evaluating the institution. Besides prospective students, the current students, parents, faculty and alumni also rely upon the institutional websites for satisfying their information needs. Moreover, the website of an educational institute acts as a platform to globally compete with other institutions. And, this makes the websites a most crucial tool for the educational institutes including HMIs and entailed the present research study to undertake comparative content analysis of the websites of Industry Oriented HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs. The findings shall be beneficial for the webmasters, administrators and other stake holders to remove their flaws and improve the efficiency of their websites.

The review of literature reveals that not merely, educational websites but also industry representing websites of stakeholders like hotels, Tourism and Corporations were also studied from many different perspectives including modified Balanced Score Card Approach. Morrison, Taylor, Morrison, and Morrison [4] applied the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach in the tourism context to evaluate the websites of 16 hotels in Scotland. The model includes multiple critical success factors based on four perspectives: technical, marketing, and internal critical, and customer critical. The researchers also marked website performance based on the error rate and three levels of download speed. Each hotel website received a total score that represented the site’s performance. This was the first tourism study to use the BSC in website evaluation. Constantine and Lockwood [5] took to user-centered web engineering. Whereas, Zhang and Dran [6] developed a theoretical framework for evaluating website quality from a user satisfaction perspective. Osborne and Rinalducci [7] designed criteria to evaluate web resources for utilization within the context of scholarly research within the discipline of the art history. Singh and Sook [8] attempted to find solutions to user problems and involved evaluating South African university websites on certain factors. The Balanced Score Card Approach that was earlier adopted by Morrisson and al. [4] was then modified by different researchers to suit to the specific needs of different industrial sectors or geographical regions. For example, Feng, Morrison, and Ismail [9] evaluated destination marketing organization (DMO) websites in China and the U.S. from Marketing Strategy, Web Page Design, Marketing Information and Technical Quality to evaluate websites’ actual performance through content analysis. The modified BSC Approach was also incorporated by So and Morrisson [10] for website evaluation from customers’ perspective through Marketing, Customer, Destination Information and Technical perspectives. Douglas and Mills [11] also adopted modified BSC Approach to realize website visitor retention through Technical, User Friendliness, Site Attractiveness and Marketing Effectiveness Perspectives. Kline et al. [12] used modified BSC Approach from user friendliness, site attractiveness, marketing effectiveness and Technical perspectives to evaluate strengths and weakness of B & B websites. Others concentrated on some specific features of websites. For example, Yoo and Jin [13] investigated and evaluated the design of university websites with appropriate contents size and architecture.

Other researchers, while assessing the university websites took in consideration other features. Agarin and Nwagwu [14] studied the web presence of Nigerian Universities and concluded that they need to organize their web activities to ease the understanding of their web usage characteristics. They also emphasized on the channelization of all web activities in the universities through a central website to ease control, as well as the use of on-ground web masters rather than use of proprietary services. Choi and Morrison [15] evaluated brick-and-mortar travel retailer websites using modified BSC Model in the U.S. from Technical, Customer, Marketing Effectiveness and Travel Agency perspectives. In the previous research studies, a variety of website features providing information services are studied to accredit website efficiency. Hasan L, Abuelrub E [16] also postulated that with the increase in dependency on web services, the need to assess characteristics with website quality and success increases. They also identified the significant importance of web characteristics; they have been a constant concern of research in different domains and they were widely studied in the e-commerce literature. While, Adventures [17] pointed on the lack of quantity and quality of content while studying higher education websites and stressed on improving the quality and depth of content as well as search functions on home pages. This is one of the few studies that asked students about their experiences with institutional websites. Utulu [18] asserted that Universities that have their own websites with high external links are perceived to have inculcated globalization initiative and are in agreement with the information-for-all initiative, as promoted by the open access movement. These increase their perceived impact, improve their visibility, and make stakeholders’ perception about them positive.

Pinto et al. [19] conducted a study on information provided by Spanish university websites on their assessment and quality processes. They analyze and evaluate the information provided by Spanish public universities on the web about their assessment and quality processes with the aim of detecting aspects for improvement and identifying best practices in universities that could act as a benchmark for the rest of the sector. The strengths and weaknesses of institutional websites were analyzed at both individual level and as a whole; the possible relation between website quality and the characteristics of the universities was also examined. Zeng, Salvendy and Zhang [20] concentrated on website creativity and probed into its influence on user behavior. Anwarul Islam and Keita Tsuji [21] evaluated some selected university websites in Bangladesh from the usability perspective and fond that users’ demands and expectations were not met with. Dahiya and Duggal [3] conducted two research studies: first, on evaluation of websites of industry integrated hotel management institutes in India from technical, user-friendly, website attractiveness and academic effectiveness perspectives to measure how efficiently the websites fulfill the information needs of its stakeholders and second on evaluation of the websites of central government IHMs and state government IHMs in India from same perspectives.

The present paper is in continuity with the above mentioned two research studies and undertakes the comparative analysis of the performance of the websites of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Govt. IHMs and State Govt. IHMs in India. This paper is a contribution in catalyzing the website performance of these HMIs highlighting the weakness of the websites and thus, suggesting remedial measures.

The objectives of the present study are outlined as:

1. To study the significant features given on the websites of Industry Integrated HMIs , Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India and to find out the strength and weakness of the given websites.

2. To compare the performance of websites of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India.

3. To suggest the remedial measures for enhancing the website performance.

Sample

The sample is the websites of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India. The eight websites of Industry Integrated HMIs and twenty one websites of Central Government IHMs and fourteen websites of State Government IHMs are given codes from 1 to 43 as in Table 1. The list is taken from https://www.nchmct.org [22] accessed during the months of July- September, 2013. For coding and listing please refer to Appendix-1.

Table 1: Name of the Industry and URL Address.

Method

The present study incorporates the modified BSC approach to compare the performance of sample websites of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India and to suggest remedial measures. It is one of the most frequently used tool developed by Morrison, Taylor, Morrison and Morrison [4] in 1999 based on of the works of Kalpan and Norton [23]. Morrison et al. [4], Feng et al. [9], So and Morrison [10], Douglas and Mills [11] and Kline, Morrison, and John [12] used modified BSC approach in their studies for evaluating performance of websites in hospitality and tourism sector incorporating various sets of four perspectives based on the need of their study. Dahiya A and Duggal S [24] also adopted modified BSC approach for comprehensive website evaluation of ten renowned hotel chains in India using four perspectives.

In the present study, Marketing Effectiveness perspective is modified into Academic Effectiveness perspective since the concern of the study is educational institutions. The rest three perspectives are same with some genuine modifications in the critical success factors.

1. Technical Aspect consists of 5 CSFs (For detail, please refer to Appendix -2)

2. User Friendliness with 16 CSFs (For detail, please refer to Appendix -3)

3. Website Attractiveness having 10 CSFs (For detail, please refer to Appendix -4)

4. Academic Effectiveness containing 49 CSFs (For detail, please refer to Appendix -5)

The same set of 80 Critical Success factors and same questionnaire is used as in previous research by (Dahiya A and Duggal S 2013) in the website evaluation of Industry Integrated HMIs. The evaluation is done by observing the absence or presence of above mentioned critical success factors on the sample websites. The technical qualities of a website are evaluated through objective measures like Net Mechanic [25] that are easily available. It assesses the five criteria originally used by Morrison et al. [4]. 5-point Likert scale with 5 being the best, 4 as Very Good, 3 being Good , 2 is Average and 1 being Poor is used to rate these criteria. Rest three perspectives are measured at Dichotomous scale consisting yes/no questions indicating the presence or absence of critical success factors on the sample websites since it aids minimizing the level of potential evaluator subjectivity.

For rating, 100 stakeholders as raters were appointed on convenient sampling basis of age group 18-28 years in ten different batches of having batch size ten each representing 10+2 students; students of Diploma In F& B services; BHM-1 year, BHM-11 year, BHM-111 year; BTM-1 year, BTM-11 year, BTM-111 year and students of MHM and MTM. The stakeholders were given training prior to rating process and they were slotted different schedules for awarding rating and were made to sit in the institute’s computer lab for the given purpose. Each perspective is equally weighted, and has weighted score of 25 points with a total weighted score of 100 points for the four perspectives combined. The cumulative scores were taken from the stakeholders and then on the basis of average scoring, rating was conducted.

The weighted scores of the above mentioned eight Industry Oriented Hotel Management Institutes are found out after evaluating their websites for the given four perspectives in Table 1.

On an average, the eight websites of Industry Integrated HMIs performed the best in Website Attractiveness Perspective with a mean score of 21.25 out of maximum 25 points. The websites of Apee Jay Institute of Hospitality, ITM- FHRAI Institute of Hotel management, Institute of Hotel Management–Aurangabad and Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration scored equally which shows they have similar features and are equally attractive to draw the attention of their stakeholders. On User-friendliness Perspective, the websites performed relatively well with a mean score of 17.83. The websites of ITM- FHRAI Institute of Hotel management scored highest amongst all with 21.8 closely followed by Apee Jay Institute of Hospitality with 20.3 points. The website of Oberoi Centre for learning and Development scored 14.06, lowest amongst all. The websites of Ashok Institute of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Jaypee Hotels Training Centre and Oberoi Centre for learning & Development do not have Independent URL for their institutes. Features like “toll free contact / help line”, “social media connectivity” and “FAQ” are customer oriented and are not present in certain websites thus making them unhandy and ineffectual. The relative magnitude score of Technical Perspective is comparatively low. The highest scorer is The Lalit School of Hospitality with 23 points and thus technically quite sound than Institute of Hotel Management –Aurangabad with 12 points. On Academic Effectiveness Perspective, the mean score of eight websites is 10.82 which is less than 50%. Academic Effectiveness is the main concern that needs focus by the institutes. The website of Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration scored highest with 20.91 points but the websites of five institutes out of eight scored less than 10 points. The website of Oberoi Centre for learning & Development performed poorly with just 2.55 points that requires immediate attention. None of the websites are found to be multilingual (except the website of Ashok Institute of Hospitality & Tourism Management which is bilingual) and so fail to cater to the needs of global students. Most of the websites of Industry Integrated Institute of Hotel Management do not provide complete information about teaching and administrative staff and library and hostel facilities. The complete information of Programmes offered, scheme of Examination, Detailed syllabus, Ordinance and Academic calendar are not given on the websites of most of the institutes. An institute is said to be progressing only when it gives due importance to Research and Innovations but most of the institutes hardly fetch any detail regarding seminars, conferences, faculty research and PDPs and FDPs on their websites. The website of ITM- FHRAI Institute of Hotel Management is the only institute that gives information on their website about financial help / scholarships to be provided to talented and needy students. Industrial Training, Placement Records and Current Placement Brochure are not detailed on many of the websites. The communication through media and the Alumni Section are also not present in most of the websites. Academic Effectiveness is the weakest perspective whereas it is the most significant for Hotel management Institutes. So in order to become successful institutes to grab a huge pool of talent, the institutes must remove their flaws and become academically robust.

Overall, the findings of Industry Integrated HMIs show that the website of ITM- FHRAI Institute of Hotel management scored highest and thus evaluated as most effective followed by Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration. The lowest on the scale of performance is the website of Oberoi Centre for learning & Development that needs to improve a lot to become effective.

The weighted scores of the 21 Central Government IHMs are found out after evaluating their websites for the given four perspectives in Table 2.

Table 2: Code number.

On an average, the sample websites performed the best in Website Attractiveness Perspective with a mean score of 22.61 out of maximum 25 points. The websites of 18 Central Government IHMs scored equally 22.5 whereas the highest scorers were IHM Delhi, and IHM Srinagar 25 points. On User-friendly Perspective, the websites performed relatively well with a mean score of 17.55. The features like toll free contact/ helpline, log in , social media connectivity through social networking sites and FAQs to help satisfy the inquisitiveness of the stakeholders are found to be used in negligible numbers by the institutes. The Academic Effectiveness Perspective is a weak link with a mean score of 12.The website of IHM, Delhi was found to be most effective academically with weighted score of 17.85 though the score is not up to the mark. Amongst the lowest scorers were the websites of Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Hotel Management, Chandigarh, IHM Jaipur and IHM, Shillong with just ten points. The features like Accessibility (how to reach), Description of the area and Map to indicate route were found to be not given importance in certain websites. None of the websites were multilingual though certain were found to be bi-lingual with English and Hindi languages. The institutes have not given any importance to the research & innovation; seminar, conferences, FDPs notifications and faculty research which is a set back to the stake holders who are interested to know the quality of research studies going on in any institute. Current Placement Brochure, Testimonials, Alumni section, Visitor Counter are amongst other features not given due importance into the websites On Technical Perspective, the mean score of twenty one websites is 12.33 which is hardly 50% and is found to be the weakest link. The website of Institute of Hotel Management, Hyderabad was found to be most technically sound with weighted score of 21 closely followed by IHM, Mumbai with 19 points. Amongst the lowest scorers were the websites of IHM, Bangalore; and IHM, Goa with least score of 5 points. The long loading time, spelling errors, increase number of bad links and browser incompatibility were found to be the issues of concern.

Overall, the website of IHM, Delhi scored highest and thus evaluated as most effective followed by IHM, Hyderabad. Five websites out of twenty one were found to be comparatively technically sounded, interactive, attractive and academically effective as scored more than 70%. They were indicated in green color in Table 3. The lowest on the scale of performance is the website of IHM, Lucknow with just 56.39 points.

Table 3: Weighted Score Results of the Website Evaluation of Industry Integrated HMIs.

The weighted scores of the 14 State Government IHMs are found out after evaluating their websites for the given four perspectives in Table 3.

On an average, the sample websites of State Government IHMs performed the best in Website Attractiveness Perspective with a mean score of 21.25 out of maximum 25 points. The websites of 11 SIHMs scored equally 22.5 whereas the highest scorer was State Institute of Hotel Management, Gangtok with 25 points. Delhi Institute of Hotel Management scored lowest amongst all with just 10 points on 25. It does not have the quality pictures, aesthetic backgrounds and even the hyperlinks were found to be inactive at times making it least attractive of all. On User-friendly Perspective, the websites performed relatively well with a mean score of 17.18. The features like toll free contact/ helpline, log in , social media connectivity through social networking sites and FAQs to help satisfy the inquisitiveness of the stakeholders are found to be used in negligible numbers by the institutes. The website of Delhi Institute of Hotel Management scored lowest 10.93 on 25. On Technical Perspective, the mean score of fourteen websites is 13.28. The website of SIHM, Faridabad with 20 points was found to be most technically sound. Amongst the lowest scorer was the websites of SIHM, Puduchery with just five points. The long loading time, spelling errors, increase number of bad links and browser incompatibility were found to be the issues of concern. The Academic Effectiveness Perspective is the weakest link with a mean score of 10.63. The highest score calculated was just 13.77 which is not up to the mark. The website of SIHM, Puduchery scored lowest. The features like Accessibility (how to reach), Description of the area and Map to indicate route were not found in certain websites. None of the websites were multilingual though certain were found to be bi-lingual with English and Hindi languages. The institutes have not given any importance to the research & innovation; seminar, conferences, FDPs notifications and faculty research which is a set back to the stake holders who are interested to know the quality of research studies going on in any institute. Current Placement Brochure, Testimonials, Alumni section, Visitor Counter are amongst other features not given due importance into the websites.

Overall, the website of SIHM, Faridabad scored highest and thus evaluated as most effective followed by SIHM, Hamirpur. Just two websites out of fourteen were found to be comparatively technically sounded, interactive, attractive and academically effective as scored more than 70%. They were indicated in green color in Table 4. The lowest on the scale of performance is the website of Delhi Institute of Hotel Management with just 39.6 points. One more website that scored less than 50% is of IHM, Puduchery (marked in Red in Table 5). These websites need to improve a lot to be an effective virtual face of the institutes they represent.

Table 4: Weighted Score Results of the Website Evaluation of Central Government IHMs.

Table 5: Weighted Score Results of the Website Evaluation of State Government IHMs.

Comparative Total Weighted Mean Score of all the perspectives of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India is given in Table 5.

From the above comparative analysis of the website performance of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India, it is clear that the variations are very less. Central Government IHMs are leading with total weighted mean score of 65.75 closely chased by Industry Integrated HMIs. Though, it is also discernible that the Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India are performing average with score ranging 62 to 66 on 100 points (Table 6, Figure 1).

Table 6: Comparative Total Weighted Mean Score of all the perspectives of Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India.

Figure 1: Comparative Total Weighted Mean Score of All the Perspectives of Industry Integrated Hmis, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India.

From the findings, it is clearly discernible that all the sample websites are attractive and embellished with good color combinations, resplendent backgrounds that reinforce the text and uncluttered pages that help drawing the attention of users. The websites are found to be user-friendly and interactive too to certain degree but also mark the absence of the features like toll free contact/ helpline, log in , social media connectivity through social networking sites and FAQs to help satisfy the inquisitiveness of the stakeholders.

On the Technical Perspective, the websites of Industry Integrated HMIs leading with 15points followed by State Government IHMs. . The long loading time, spelling errors, increase number of bad links and browser incompatibility were found to be the issues of concern. On Academic Effectiveness perspective, Central Government IHMs lead with 13.26 which is hardly 50% and is the weakest link. Lowest scorer was State Government IHMs. The features like Accessibility (how to reach), Description of the area and Map to indicate route were not found in certain websites. None of the websites were multilingual though certain were found to be bi-lingual with English and Hindi languages. The institutes have not given any importance to the research & innovation; seminar, conferences, FDPs notifications and faculty research which is a set back to the stake holders who are interested to know the quality of research studies going on in any institute. Current Placement Brochure, Testimonials, Alumni section, Visitor Counter are amongst other features not given due importance into the websites.

Overall, the websites of Central Government IHMs performed better than other two with 65.75 as mean weighted score closely followed by Industry Oriented HMIs. The comparative analysis of the perspectives showed that the websites of Central Government IHMs are comparatively attractive and academically effective but technically weak scoring least of other two. The websites of Industry Oriented HMIs were reported to be comparatively technical sound and userfriendly. Still, the results show much score of improvement in the websites for better performance. These websites need to improve a lot to be an effective virtual face of the institutes they represent.

The comparative analysis of the websites of Industry Oriented HMIs, Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs is undertaken to find out their strengths and weakness. Overall, the sample websites perform average leaving much scope for improvement specifically in the areas of technicality as well academic effectiveness. A sharp analysis indicates that the websites of Central Government IHMs performed slightly better than other two with 65.75. They were found to be comparatively attractive and academically effective but technically weak scoring least of other two. The websites of Industry Oriented HMIs were found to be more user-oriented and have least problems of browser incompatibility, spelling errors and bad links. Overall, the websites are recommended to improve by conceiving following suggestions:

• Decreased Loading time and zeroing the bad links;

• Browser compatibility, least spelling errors and technically sound;

• Independent URL and Toll free contact number/helpline;

• Social connectivity via face book, twitter , Linkedin and other such tools;

• Comprehensive detail about course structure, fee structure and examination scheme;

• Section for alumni, and their data base;

• Facilities for downloading Brochure, application forms and other forms;

• Information about Institutional/faculty research and major thrust areas;

• Multilingual website

• Information regarding placement and current placement brochure

By adopting such remedial measures, these websites will definitely have all the ingredients of a successful website and thus cater to information needs of potential students, current students and other stakeholders more efficiently and effectively.