A study of the perceptions of hong kong hotel managers on the potential disintermediation of travel agencies

The wide-scale integration of the Internet in the hospitality and tourism industry has drawn the attention of researchers worldwide to the issue of the disintermediation of travel agen-cies. Despite the existence of numerous prior studies on disintermediation, only a very limited number of published articles have focused on the perceptions of industry practitioners of the im-pact of the Internet on the role of travel agencies. This empirical study makes an attempt to investi-gate the perceptions of Hong Kong hotel managers of the impact of Internet technology on the role of travel agencies as an intermediary. Using a survey of 88 hotel managers, the study shows that the perception of disintermediation can be initially grouped into five dimensions: (i) Price, (ii) Prod-uct, (iii) Participants, (iv) Place and (v) Process. Experimental results show that hotel practitioners do not perceive that disintermediation of travel agencies will occur. However, the respondents also predicted that the share of e-business in total hotel room sales will increase.