According to a survey, jointly conducted by the Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Association of India (FHRAI), HVS International and Procurez.com, "Hotel Websites at 5.5 per cent had the highest growth rate over the previous year specially in the heritage sector where it accounted for 12.4 per cent of all advance reservations."

The report shows the growing importance of information technology (IT) in hospitality sector. The survey indicates that while almost all hotels use some accounting software packages, the penetration of local area network (LAN) within hotels is about 40 per cent. About 30 per cent of 1,131 hotels surveyed, found using management information systems (MIS). "IT spending in hotels is increasing as hoteliers realise the necessity of adopting technology to reduce their overall cost and increase profit," says Procurez.com's chief executive officer Mr Rohit Chauhan. Procurez.com is a complete hospitality service solutions provider.

"It takes about Rs 4-5 lakh for a hotelier to set up a Website and get global reach. The hotel may recover the entire investment in a year and saves on the advertising cost," he said adding that most of the international budget tourists take help of Websites to get informations about the destinations they want to visit and prefer hotel reservation on- line. The survey also reveals that while print advertising continues to be the most popular marketing medium used by hotels, Websites are extensively used by the star category hotels as effective marketing media. About 89.9 per cent hotels surveyed continued to rely on print advertising. At the same time 84.4 per cent five star deluxe and 91.3 per cent five star hotels are found using their hotel Websites as an effective marketing media.

"This can be directly linked to the increase in Internet Access Systems in hotels. About 50 per cent hotels have Internet access systems while an Intranet exists in almost 25 per cent of the hotels," says Mr Chauhan. The survey covering data from 1,131 hotels encompassing 60,647 rooms across 19 cities including Agra, Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Goa, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Manali, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Shimla and Udaipur.