As
days goes by the level of competition in every business continues to grow; this
simply means that the hospitality and tourism industry will put in all their
available resources in order to achieve the organizational objectives, survive
and develop their competitiveness (Brown, 2007).

        The survival and growth of any business
is seen in their ability to effectively utilize updated information in order to
assist the management of an organization decision making and marketing
processes (Pine, 2006). Hence, Information Technology (IT) assists organization
to manage information dynamically and influences business competitiveness
through assisting decision makers to make appropriate investments and
decisions.

According
to (Connolly & Lee, 2006; Singh & Kasavana, 2005) stated that
information communication technology (ICT) helps to meet the demands for timely
and accurate information by customers and the IT diffusion in the tourism and
hospitality industries has recently increased at an unprecedented rate.

This
is evident by the ubiquitous presence of IT systems that work cooperatively to
assist managers to deliver quality service to their customers and to enhance
operational efficiency and control costs. Researchers have stated that IT, by
acting as a protector and enhancer, directly influences the experiences and
behavior of tourists (Kim & Ham, 2007; Singh, Kim, & Huh, 2006; Winata
& Mia, 2005).

More
strategically ICT is gradually reshaping the fundamental structure of industry
and society (Buhalis, 1998, 2003). IT can generate the knowledge at the center
of a business’s competitiveness (Chathoth, 2007; Ham, Kim & Jeong, 2005).

According
to (Law and Jogaratnam, 2005) further stated that ICT can transform the nature
of tourism and hospitality products, processes, businesses, and competition,
and that tourism and hospitality organizations that have failed to master the
right ICT systems would find difficult to direct and manage their
information-intensive business damaging their competitiveness. Tourism and
hospitality are social phenomena, and the industries associated with them are
largely application oriented. Researchers in this field have conducted, and
will continue to conduct, research that generates innovative knowledge that
will benefit these industries and ultimately society.

As
investment in and the adoption of ICT are now an indispensable components of
tourism and hospitality business, ICT serves as a tool for both enabling and
inducing change. As such, IT has recently drawn the attention of tourism and
hospitality researchers worldwide, who have disseminated their findings in
research journals. Niininen, Buhalis and March (2007) demonstrated that ICT
support consumer centricity, with consumers being able to use technology to
select and customize their products as well as to personalize their experience.
It is advantageous for tourism and hospitality managers in general and
marketing managers in particular to be aware of the recent changes in ICT and
their relationship with customer service.

As
IT development becomes more sophisticated, industrial practitioners, educators,
and policy makers may find increasing difficulty in selecting, analyzing,
implementing, and operating new IT systems. Research journals, as a vigorous
channel of knowledge dissemination, can offer peer-reviewed and unbiased
information on IT analysis, evaluation, and industrial best practice. However,
despite the enormous amount of effort spent by tourism and hospitality
researchers on investigating IT, there are only a few reviews of the articles
published on IT or the progress of IT in the tourism industry since its rapid
growth in the early 1980s (Frew 2000; Kirk & Pine 1998; Kluge 1996; Leung
& Law, 2005, 2007; O’Connor & Murphy 2004, Buhalis and Law, 2008).
Moreover, the review articles that do exist are limited, either because they
examine only a few selected journals or because they cover work that is already
somewhat outdated given the fast changing nature of IT and tourism. The study
in this regard wishes to examine the impact of ICT applications on the
hospitality and tourism industry using Tinapa Resort Center, Calabar as the
case study.

1.2
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF TENAPA RESORT CENTER