Avaliação da usabilidade de Websites de hotéis segundo as heurísticas de Nielsen: pesquisa exploratória em hotéis da Região Rordeste do Brasil

This Thesis deals with the usability in some sites of hotels placed in a specific region of Brazil. Usability is the property of a site that shows how it allows the user get all information available without a large effort and in a clear and objective way. A questionnaire was used as a tool to value, by the common user perspective, navigation, on line reservation simulation, appreciation of the available content and, by this way, an easiness in the interaction site-users. As a result, it is possible to say that, considering all material analyzed, those sites that present usability criterion are more interactive and dynamic, demonstrating an easy navigation in a users view. By other side, it was possible to note that, about heuristics used in the search, the most of the websites demonstrated a deficiency in questions as firmness, user control and how to avoid mistakes. There was still valued as deficiency by the most of users in websites the general characters and the view of user. It was presented, seeing general characters, that a big part of the websites needs tools that can make user rapidly find what looks for. It was yet possible to see that users don't believe in secret when websites ask them some information. This is a point that needs to be appreciated because it causes some insecurity during navigation

Utilização de indicadores financeiros e não-financeiros na gestão de hotéis no Rio Grande do Norte: um estudo sob a ótica do Balanced Scorecard

This study presents the results of a research on the use of financial and non-financial performance indicators used by medium and large hotels. The research was conducted in Rio Grande do Norte, a Brazilian State. The objective is to identify the usage of performance measures by these companies. Hotel industry is one of the most important sectors in the Rio Grande do Norte economy. The research takes the Balanced Scorecard as a conceptual framework, since it represents an original contribution to the literature of managerial accounting, for rethinking old issues, pointing out themes that were forgotten or badly interpreted, to discuss the requirements imposed by the economy environment, dominated by competitive companies, and increasing the understanding of the relationship between strategy and operation. The objective of the research is to investigate if the hotel managers make use of a managerial information system or not, when evaluating the performance of their business unit. The research reveals the usage of performance evaluation using a large variety of measures. Among them is worth mention: the usage of accounting profit altogether with the EVA/MVA, the process cycle time, total quality management, process transformation, strategic mission, vision, strategic measures, measures related to feedback, risk, costs, productivity, incomes, customers retention, customer satisfaction and profitability, measures using time as a component, quality of the process, cost of the processes, employees capabilities, information systems, motivation, empowerment and alignment. The research leads to the conclusion that the usage of the deriving concepts of Balanced Scorecard can improve the performance measurement systems used by hotels