E-business in the Ghanaian Tourism Industry

Purpose: Ghana's tourism sector is hypothesized to be a major economic growth catalyst. The role of e-business in improving the fortunes of Ghana's tourism sector cannot be over emphasised. This exploratory study sought to generate a preliminary understanding of the benefits of e-business to tourism firms in Ghana and also to ascertain the commitment of top management to e-business development in Ghanaian tourism firms. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study was exploratory and adopted a small scale survey approach. Data was collected by final year undergraduate students in the University of Ghana Business School from 60 tourism firms in Ghana. Presentation of findings is by simple descriptive statistics. Findings: The Research revealed that 56% of Managing Directors of Ghanaian tourism organizations are e-business champions. Advantages of e-business to tourism firms are distributed nearly proportionately across various firms' improvement parameters such as improvement in marketing management (14%) as well as improvement in process management (13%). Also reported were improvements in marketing communications (12%)z human resource management (10%), as well as improvement in distribution (9%). Other benefits reported were improved logistics management (8%), efficient financial management (8%) as well ase-scouting(4%). Research Implications: This study is the first in a series of studies that will investigate website use, Internet use, and e-commerce usage in Ghanaian tourism firms. This first study, therefore, provides some basis for hypothesis formulation in the upcoming studies alluded to earlier.Limitations: The Study is exploratory and therefore does not make any generalisable claims. It is only useful as an initial eye-opener to e-business issues in Ghana's tourism sector.Originality/Value: One of the few studies focusing on e-business adoption in the tourism sector in West Africa, in spite of the growing importance of the tourism sector.