E-Marketing and Hotel Performance: Strategic Insights from Star-Rated Hotels in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

This article investigates the impact of electronic marketing (e-marketing) channels—specifically email marketing, social media marketing, mobile marketing, and search engine optimisation (SEO)—on the performance of star-rated hotels in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Using a quantitative approach grounded in the Resource-Based View (RBV), data collected from employees across ten hotels reveal that all four e-marketing channels positively influence hotel performance, with email and mobile marketing showing the strongest effects. The study highlights significant synergies among integrated e-marketing platforms and recommends enhancing email campaigns, improving international visibility through SEO, and leveraging analytics for personalized customer engagement. Limitations include the study's focus on a single city, reliance on employee-reported data, and cross-sectional design, suggesting future research should incorporate longitudinal methods, customer perspectives, and broader geographic contexts to deepen understanding of e-marketing's role in emerging hospitality markets.