Applying Information Technology To Business Decision-Making In The Hotel Enterprises

Awareness that the successful performance of any company depends upon making and implementing decisions has caused special attention to be focused on researching issues related to the decision process. Research seeks to reveal the regularities that govern this process in order to limit irrational behaviour and to lead decision-makers to use rational methods in accomplishing rational objectives. Given that uncertainty characterises today’s business environment, this topic is increasingly gaining the attention of management and becoming a major issue in the business-decision process, while changing the current role of analysis in making business decisions. Certainly, rapid IT development is an important source of change, enabling the emergence of new decision-making methods and techniques not previously applied by managers. Due to the exceptional value of information in eliminating higher or lower levels of uncertainty, various information systems have been developed that serve for using information as a basis for making business decisions. This Paper focuses on Decision Support Systems, because their purpose is to provide assistance to managers in making the appropriate decisions to non-structured problems in decision-making. These systems enable the interactive application of decision-making rules, models and model bases together with databases and the individual approach of the business-decision maker. The survey was conducted on a representative sample comprising 124 hotels in the Primorsko-Goranska County and the Istria County of the Republic of Croatia. Results show that, in Croatian hotel practises, information technology continues to represent an operational tool used primarily to support operational management levels, while top management levels often fail to recognise and, consequently, fail to apply to any significant extent the advantages information technology offers to improve the management of their facility.