A Study of E-commerce Adoption by Nepalese Tourism Website: Contain Analysis

This study conduct to evaluate e-commerce features adopt by Nepalese tourism websites through content analysis. Information on the website plays a vital role to influence traveler. This study analyses 41 different features of the website of the Nepalese tourism industry. In this research in total examining 120 website's features, and these features are divided into six dimensions: product information, non-product information, reservation, payment, functionality and customer relationship management. The researcher found that there is a significant difference between hotel and travel agencies websites on adopting feature and information provided to their customers. The finding shows that e-commerce is still in the introduction phase in the Nepalese tourism industry. Tourism companies are failing to deliver adequate information on their website. Websites are only focused on product information rather than other information, and there is a significant difference between hotel website and travel agencies websites on adopting features. Websites need to improve their payment, reservation and functionality features on their website.

industries website in terms of communicating and doing business transaction such as online booking, consulting, payments, customer relationship management, etc.

Literature review E-commerce in developing countries
Buying and selling product and services is known as e-commerce and it has an effect on information technology, economic sectors and enhance productivity ((Nahari & Krutz, 2011)). Repaid growth of e-commerce technology in developing countries increase the volume of transaction. In developing countries e-commerce able to support to develop business and find great opportunities from the global market. The organization can compete in the international market through e-commerce but need a government role to create a business environment by introduction of the power of the internet (Pittawat Ueasangkomsate, 2015). Many studies carried out the problem on e-commerce adoption especially in developing countries like consumer attitudes, infrastructure, political issues, socio-economic issues, language barriers, computer knowledge, technical, legal, societal and financial problems (Anzaki, 2014, Aleid, 2012. There are many problems in developing countries that hindering the development of e-commerce, such as consumer's attitudes towards e-commerce system, privacy, consumer information security and trust (Wei et al., 2010). (Wei et al., 2010).

E-commerce and tourism industries in Nepal
The arrival of new technology and influence from neighbor countries such as China and India. Nepal is also on way to develop e-commerce activities. Generally believed that Nepal has been conducting online transaction since 2000 by the initiation of online shopping site thamel.com. Nowadays, e-commerce is not limited to only online shopping. People are expanding their businesses, selling goods and providing online services and facilities through websites and Facebook social site which is famous in Nepal. Facebook gives a good platform for the young entrepreneur. These all e-commerce activities accelerate with high and cheap 4G internet facilities. According to the Nepal telecom authority (NTA), a total of internet user reached to 63% at the end of 2017. Increase in the young generation in the internet and growth of IT companies create more opportunities in ecommerce in Nepal.
The tourism industry is one of the biggest industry in Nepal. It directly impacts on Nepalese economy. The tourism industry is the main source of foreign revenue. In Nepal, all total 1101 star and tourist standard hotel are operated, travel agencies and trekking agencies reached up to 3824 and 2647 respectively in 2017. Every year tour guide, tour operators, rafting agencies, and guides all are in increasing trend (Nepal ministry of culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, 2018). E-commerce is emerging in service sectors especially in hotels and travel agencies. Now it's common to book the hotel's room, buy air ticket and travel package. Tourism suppliers and agencies offer certain discount and more facilities by booking from online. The adoption of e-commerce still remains a huge challenge for Nepal's tourism industry. Compared with other developed countries, Nepal's hotel industry and tourism companies have less experience in using e-commerce.

Research Review on e-commerce in the tourism industry
Repaid growth of technology and online transaction tourism agencies establish direct distribution channel ca use reduction of intermediator role and their commission. Many scholars and researcher are using many theories and model about travel and tourism and interpret the effect of adopting new technology Kaijun Cao & Zhaoping Yang; discussed the planning and booking a trip is now increasingly common for the traveler.
This study evaluates travel website and their performance in term of e-commerce adoption using a content analysis approach. The study analysis the present status of Chinese website performance in term of adoption of e-commerce. The research indicates that Chinese tourism website is not effectively utilizing the internet to its full potential and inadequate investment in e-commerce. Most tourism websites are focusing on providing information about location destination, facilities, and services. Most of the websites are established scenic area management team, so it creates a lack of product information or package, reservation, and payment system. Hsien Tang Tsai, et al present after 3 years survey, the e-commerce model has a significant impact on travel industries. With new technology, the customer starts to buy directly from suppliers and cut commission of travel agencies. Only those agencies are survived who successfully adopt e-commerce and other agencies are going on bankrupt. All travel agencies are should improve their customer services and maintain their intermediary roles and function through ecommerce.
Patrick McCole and Elaine Ramsy 2005. The new spatial possibilities of internet-based technology provide a powerful route to innovative marketing strategies. The researcher found significantly different between a firm that adopts and those that do not adopt e-commerce technology. The adopters are more proactive, creative and more aware of opportunities afforded by new technology (in terms of offering new services idea). And nonadopters believe that there are still many barriers hindering them from selling goods and service online.
Mohamed A. Abou-Shouk et al find the factors that influence e-commerce adoption in SME in travel agents in a developing country. Some benefits factor influence on the decision to adopt-commerce by tourism industries. This paper reviled three categories of benefits essential, marketing and competition, and international business efficiency. On the other hand, reveals that barrier to e-commerce adoption such as poor infrastructure. This revel four categories of the barrier to adoption: attributes of adopting technology, external business environment, internal environment, and resource limitations.
Zheng Xiang et al discuss the nature of the use of the internet by an American traveler. The use of the internet is reaching a saturation level and still traditional channel dominant travel planning. In the context of technology, there is a significant impact on travel and tourism. The internet has a primary information source for travel planning. Different information tools help and serve different propose at a different stage of travel planning such as search engine, travel portal, virtual communication, and website of a destination marketing organization.
Young Shim Lim and Eunice Eunjung Yoo 2012, describe that travelers tend to be browser multiple websites to find the destination information. They have researched on two types of websites, generalists such as tripadviser.com and specialist such as NYCgo.com. Specialist websites are better in the adoption of several web features like a trip plane, event information, and theme menu. And they are more likely to report paper base brochure, attraction and event ticket reservation, and special offer or package to the traveler. While generalist websites are more like to report destination background information and travel tips, user gallery and review, transportation and accommodation reservation, multimedia and multiple languages.

Website evaluation studies
Research on the tourism website, generally concern about tourism information system, electronic tourism commerce, data warehousing, information search and interface design (Quan Zhou and RichSantis 2005). There is no standard way to analysis of websites. Web site evaluation is broadly defined as ensuring that website provides a useful content, correct and comprehensive set of requirement that meets the user expectation and usability of setting a goal (law et al 2010; 2019). Researchers are adopting a various approach to evaluating websites on their academic research. The most common approaches are contained analysis, benchmarking, survey, experiment, case study and automatic evaluation (Law et al 2010;Kaijun Cao 2016). In-depth study of organization strength, weakness, progress, and effect of the particular situation Experiment research is a description and analysis of the effect on the dependent variable of manipulation of the independent variable (Prabhat Pandey, 2015) Count the number of features of the website.
Benchmarking is the continuing process of comprising business performance with other company.
Content analysis is a generally accepted methodology of social science, which has attracted wide attention, logical and quantitative description of communication content (Baran, 2002). Contain analysis is most widely used in tourism websites analysis.
The main motivation of website development is to improve business performance, sales and provide better customer satisfaction and most research focuses on the adoption of e-commerce and how they can get benefit from the Internet. So this study focus on exploring the website content, features, and information of tourism website and analyses ecommerce adoption in Nepalese tourism sectors.

Methodology
In this study, the Nepalese tourism industry refers to the hotel industry and travel agencies. Travel agencies and trekking agencies are laid into one column as a travel agency. Research methods differ dependent on

Research method Description
Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Sports www.iiste.org ISSN (Paper) 2312-5187 ISSN (Online) 2312-5179 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.46, 2020 37 requirement and nature of the business. In this research, content analysis was conducted to analyze and better understand of Nepalese tourism website's (NTB) feature and performance in terms of e-commerce adoption. To minimize error and making simplicity on research, the researcher uses the counting method. First, prepare a checklist to analyze the feature of website or attributes, these features and attributes are related to the context of Nepal tourism. In this research 41 features are analyzed and these features were established by review of the literature.

Research dimension
For making simple and give the qualitative structure on research. Website attributes and features are divided into six dimensions: Product information, Non-Product information, Reservation, Payment, Functionality and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). These dimensions are also taken from the literature review. Every features are more relevant to the Nepal context. These features are included a variety of information, services and product description, FQAs, reciprocal link, online consulting, etc. the complete set of feature is given in the The clarity of coding is an essential consideration in contain analysis (shah ram Salvati et al, 2015). Before coding of each website features. Both hotel and travel agencies websites features are divided into six dimensions. The detail information of the dimension is following. Product information: Information regarding product & services, rates, and FQA provide on websites. Non-product information: Apart from the product information website provide other information such as weather, visa information, and travel tips, etc. Reservation: feature involving online booking, checking online availability or inquire about product and services. Payment: payment method. Functionality: available of a link to other important information, a function that makes easy to use the website. Customer Relation Management (CRM): a way of handling customer and provide service through online.

Website sampling and evaluation process
In this study, the researcher used random selection approach to analyses Nepalese tourism website and used such a search engine to select website such search engine are google.com, bing.com, and baidu.com. Researcher evaluates in a total of 120 websites in November and December 2018. And then count the number of features adopt by website using MS Excel. Like '1' was recorded if tourism website provider related information or features a '0' if not. In this research, there is 2 independent variable TH, TAT, and 1 dependent variable NTU, and every independent variable has sub-variables so Multivariate Analysis Variance (MONAVO) used to find significance level. MANAVO analysis was analyze using STATA 9.

Result Overall Statistics Description
The descriptive statistics provide a simple summary or basic website features adopt by tourism industries. In Nepal currently 7572 tourism organization are operating including hotel, travel and trekking agencies but out of these organization hardly found 120 tourism organization's website. It means that most of the tourism organization are still carry on without a website. During the analysis of websites and also noticed that out of 120 tourism website only 8 websites host their website in Nepal's country domain .np though companies can register a domain name by .np in Nepal official domain register free of charge.
In table no. 1, Overall data show that 100% of tourism websites display their detail information about a product, services, and email address. Over 80% of hotel websites provide the price of their products and photo gallery information. While 80% of travel agencies perform well in the online quotation or inquire bottom and community/forum information. Approximately 60% of travel agencies provide a search function, reciprocal link, social site information, travel tips, travel direction, news, and blogs. But hotel websites are indigent in providing news and blogs. Less than 10% of travel agencies website provide create customer account facilities, shopping cart, mobile application, and local transportation information. In the context of hotel websites, less than 10% of websites provide subscription of the email newsletter, online consulting, travel direction, privacy, and security policy.
In addition, more than 70% of websites provide online booking option but most of them are not working properly when clicking on 'book now' bottom it leads to contact information page. Nearly 40% of travel agencies website provides their product price information in the dollar, in the context of hotel more than 80%. It means both websites are focusing on the international market but they failed on providing exchange rate and multi-language.
Analysis of 120 websites (by random selection) features both sectors focus on product & services description. These are the most common feature in tourism website. Beside product & service description some of the tourism websites also good on presenting photo gallery, travel tips, maps social site info and community/forum information. Most distinguishing features of travel agencies travel direction, visa information, reciprocal link, search function, and privacy policy. On other hand hotel websites are good on the map, making online reservation photo gallery and price of the product.

Difference between website
These situations show that there are significant differences between hotel websites and travel agency websites. Hotel websites are the only emphasis on the product description. Price it directly effect to traveler perception, hotel products are less customizable and the most common product of hotels is room and facilities. So Price, room description and facilities is the most essential information to traveler. Travel agencies website along with price also focus on nonproduct information and customer relationship management like visa information, news, and blog, community/forum, social site information, travel tips and direction. Travel agency products are more customizable, depending on the traveler, so travel agencies also focus on non-production information that can entice travelers. show that non-product information dimension of tourism website is significantly different. To analyses the average frequency of website, travel agency's CMR dimension is good but payment and reservation dimension are comparatively cast down. On the other hand hotel website is good on product dimension, because of most of the website provide hotel room price, room description, and photo but reservation and payment feature or information are completely discontents.

Discussion and conclusion
This empirical research result highlights several important issues. Having a website means to enter into the global market, Nepalese tourism websites are entering and performing in the global tourism market with basic product information and email address. This finding indicates that the Nepalese tourism websites are not fully utilizing the internet to its full potential. Travel agencies tried to give information other than product & service information but it is not sufficient. Other than product and service information like travel tips, payment method, maps transportation information plays a vital role to the traveler and facilitate them to make a travel plan. These information change the perception of the customer. The above result shows the hotel website performance is really poor. They only focus on room features, services, and facilities. In order to compete on a competitive market, both hotel and Travel agencies should add more e-commerce features like reservation, payment, CRM. It shows immature in the adoption of ecommerce. Need more investment. If tourism website provides such service and information it would facilitate travel and help to increase tourist in Nepal.
For an examination of the results, the following recommendations are made. Tourism website needs to assure customers that their personal information will not be disclosed. Customer's sensitive data such as credit card detail and other personal information enter into e-commerce system need to protect. A potential customer will feel safe to use the website. In order to do this tourism website should add privacy and security policy on their website, especially hotel website. Hotel websites are really poor on providing privacy and security policy on their website.
To compete in the international market, tourism website needs to add more features. In order to get benefits from global market tourism website need to add, visa information, currency converter or current exchange rate, etc. According to the Nepal immigration department recently Chinese tourist is increasing. It is recommended that a tourism website need to add multiple language feature, at least the Chinese language need to add on their website.
Tourism website needs to adopt e-commerce fully, both hotel and travel agencies need to improve their payment option, payment option should be flexible. Online reservation or booking, booking policy, cancellation policy and check availability features, so visitors easily understand and complete online transaction through internet channel.
On non-product information dimension, hotel website needs to add local transportation information or information of how to get into the hotel and surrounding area information. Both website, hotel and travel agencies need to update their news and blog, travel tips and weather information.
On CRM dimensions, tourism website needs to enhance their CRM services. It is suggested that websites add customer feedback, customer survey, online consulting to solve customers' problem immediately and community/forum information that built customers trust. Another important thing, provide social site Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Sports www.iiste.org ISSN (Paper) 2312-5187 ISSN (Online) 2312-5179 An International Peer-reviewed Journal Vol.46, 2020 40 information, this is the best way to socialize, nowadays many people are involving in the social site where tourist can share their experience, feedback, and suggestion.
In summary, this research conduct to evaluate website features adopts by tourism industry (hotel and travel agency) through contain analysis approach. With this close research show up the current features of travel agencies and hotels website. This research will help to improve their website features and can get the advantage of e-commerce especially hotel's manager and travel business entrepreneur.
This study has several shortcomings. First of all, hotel and travel agencies nature of business in some way different so both websites some features may not be comparable. This study evaluates 41 features of 120 websites. The website features and sampling may not be comprehensive. Second, all the data in this study collected by a single person with presence of supervisor there is an inevitable difference in defining and evaluating websites features.