The importance of e-commerce adoption to boost small enterprise growth in the tourism industry

This study aimed to reveal the impact of adopting e commerce on the growth of SMEs in tourism sector in Saudi Arabia. It was based on the descriptive analytical approach; the questionnaire was used as a data collection tool. It was applied to a sample of (27) out of the whole small and medium tourism enterprises in Jeddah and Riyadh. The sample was randomly selected, and the data was statistically processed by using SPSS. The study found several results، the most important of them is: There is a high degree of e commerce adoption in all the randomly selected enterprises sample. The results also showed a strong positive correlation between the variables of the study – adopting e commerce and the growth of SMEs in tourism sector in Saudi Arabia. the growth has been tested by some factors such as net income, cost control, annual sales, penetrating new markets, market share, satisfied customers, image and reputation, number of surfers to the company's website. There is neither a relationship between socio-demographic variables and the opinion of the participants toward adopting e-commerce nor company's financial performance. Several recommendations were submitted، including: an international law should be applied for legal issues arise from e commerce adoption such as patent and registered trademarks protection. payment methods in all websites should be diversified. appropriate measures should be taken reacting to fraud and privacy violation when applying e commerce.