Dissertation (MSc Information Technology)
The present study had a focus on developing ICT adoption framework for the operational performance of the tourism and hospitality industry (HI) to solve the low adoption of ICT facing the Small Medium Size Hotels (SMSHs), which fall under the category of Small and Medium Enterprises. Zanzibar Island was used as a case study area.
The study focused on major three objectives. The first objective was to analyze components for ICT adoption framework so as to match to the selected environment. The second was to design ICT adoption framework. Third was to validate the designed ICT adoption framework. The process of validation was in two forms, one is by gathering workshop of all stakeholders categories (ICT heads, managers, receptionists, and servers which were waiter and waitress) having the focus group discussion about the designed framework validation. The Second validation was by inferential statistical techniques such as regression variance and correlation.
The framework comprised of components and the determinants of ICT adoption in tourism and HI. The study used a quantitative approach. The study employed descriptive statistics technique in analyzing data to extract the components of the ICT adoption framework by using frequency distribution. Also, the study employed inferential statistic applied to extract the determinants of ICT adoption framework, this was done by using regression analysis. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) were used as a model to support the regression analysis with its respective constructs. The dependent construct was behavioral intention to adopt ICT with other six independent constructs. The findings revealed that all constructs were having a strong positive association with behavioral intention to adopt ICT except the social influence construct. On the other hand, components were analyzed according to the rank of its frequency and percentage indicating its importance. The tool used to analyze components and determinants was Statistical Package for Social Science 23.0 (SPSS).
Finally, the ICT adoption framework was developed based on findings comprising of three important things namely, components, determinants, and the adoption pattern. Hence, this proposed framework was designed based on the study area and can be adapted to any other place as an exemplary guiding framework .