Websites of Hotel Management Institutes (HMIs) in India: An Empirical Study of Central and State Government Institutes

The economic efflorescence in hospitality industry has carved Indian market into a favorable investment niche for the global hospitality companies. It is harbinger of huge pool of employment generation in coming years. This has resulted into plethora of Hotel Management Institutes (HMIs) in India. The Industry Integrated HMIs, Central Government Institute of Hotel Management (IHMs), State Government Institute of Hotel Management (SIHMs), Private IHMs and Government Universities offering the Hotel Management Programs are intensifying the competition that has made the web presence for these HMIs almost fundamental. A website is known to be the virtual face of an institute which it presents online to potential students, current students and other stakeholders. The present research study intends to evaluate the websites of Central Government IHMs and State Government IHMs in India. The modified balanced scorecard (BSC) approach is incorporated into the evaluation by taking into consideration four perspectives: technical, user friendly, website attractiveness and academic effectiveness. A set of 80 critical success factors representing these four perspectives is then used to examine the websites. Most of the websites are found to be attractive and user-friendly, however, the results of the study disclose that Academic effectiveness is an area for IHMs' and SIHMs' website improvement as most of the websites lack in providing the adequate information that is considered of academic relevance/ interest. Finally it is suggested that the websites of most of the IHMs and SIHMs need to provide comprehensive details on vital areas such as careers, placements, programmes offered, fee structure, scheme of examination, research and innovations. It is further suggested that, the websites may be designed to be multilingual and have social connectivity too.