Assessment item 3

Case Study

Value: 20%

Due date: 20-Dec-2013

Return date: 10-Jan-2014

Length: approx. 1500 words (can be longer if required)

Submission method options

Hand delivery (option applies to Internal only)

Alternative submission method

Task

You are required to analyse the effectiveness of the Hotel Booking systems. To do this you are required to employ at least two data gathering techniques including research and observation. You will need to research the existing Hotel Booking  systems and other information you can find about airlines. You also need to observe how at least three (3) users interact with the system. Suppose the 3 users want to book accommodation in different hotels. Depending on the site you choose, you need to script two or more scenarios for these users, and then observe their interaction. For instance, the two possible scenarios might be as follows:

(A) You want to book a hotel in Perth for next Friday. Before booking your accommodation, you want to be sure that you are getting the best rates for the room. You therefore want to find out what other similar hotels charge for similar accommodation (choose the same one for all 3 participants) on that day.

(B) You would like to pay for your accommodation in advance (to confirm room availability). You would like to prefer a secure checkout to prevent fraud and protect your privacy. You therefore want to compare the different payment mechanisms (Cash, Cheque, Credit Card, PayPal etc) available at the 3 hotels.

Questions you need to address are:

1. What are the major business objectives and processes (operations) that the hotel company carries out?

2. List the information systems that are used to support their portal and describe how they are related to the overall business objectives and processes.

3. Detail the scenarios you developed and how the users you observed interacted with the system as a registered member of the system, a temporary member and without registration, when carrying out the tasks of those scenarios.

4. Recommend improvements to the system and describe the analytic consequences. For instance, not all airlines provide systems for online boarding. If the company were to add such functionality, what do the analysts need to consider?

5. Describe the stakeholders involved. Who are they? Why do analysts need to consider their interests?

6. Discuss, in detail, the data collection techniques you used to answer the above questions.