The evaluation of it usage in hotel businesses in the context of task-technology fit model: A study on 4 and 5 stars hotels in İstanbul

Due to its nature, tourism industry is information and labor intensive. Therefore as a part of tourism industry, hospitality sector attaches great importance in knowledge acquisition, production, consumption and use for daily jobs compared to the other sectors. As a product, hotels are time sensitive and sale of the product requires one to one communication with customers. In order to sell these products hotels have to use information and communication technologies to ensure fast and accurate information transmission and communication with customers. In today?s world, survival of hotel companies depends on how well they record, store and process huge amount of information that comes from internal and external environment and turn it into competitive advantage. In an environment where the conditions change rapidly and information becomes more important everyday, the use of information technologies becomes a necessity for the hotel companies. From this point of view, information technologies allow hotel businesses to use information more effectively and efficiently in management, production and marketing processes. Hotels invest a huge amount of money in IT and labour. Therefore, the ability to harness the information technology to improve efficiency of hotel operations and employee performance is the key factor in the success of hotel businesses. However, today most managers ignore this fact and they think that parallel to the increase in technology investments, employee performance will increase respectively.In the last two decades, many researchers have investigated the relationship between IT usage and organizational performance. However there seems to be a little research that has solely focused on the effect of IT usage on individual employee performance in hotel businesses. In this context, this study aims to explain the the interaction of hotel employees and information technologies and its effects on individual employee performance. Assessments within the scope of the study are made by evaluating the results of the survey conducted in 4 and 5 stars hotels in Istanbul. In conclusion, the performance of the employees working in 4 and 5 star hotels in İstanbul influenced by technology characteristics, task characteristics and social norms. The analysis revealed that to increase impact of information technologies on employee performance to an optimum level, hotels should provide information technologies that provides fast and accurate information flow to the employees that perform multiple task at the same time and employees should be encouraged to use them.