Search

The collection of customer and guest satisfaction data is an essential element of quality assurance in the field of tourism, particularly as we are witnessing a dramatic change in demand behaviour along with increasing differentiation and individualisation. In this connection, surveys conducted with the help of touch-screen terminals present an alternative to conventional methods of data collection (face-to-face interviews or self completion questionnaires) as this innovative method reduces time and costs. We describe the technical, organisational and economic benefits of this new system and discuss the methodical characteristics of touch-screen surveys. Comparing the touch-screen method with oral and paper&pencil-interviews has shown that the data collected at the terminals are of high quality and comparability to those resulting from other forms of surveys. In this context, there is a difference, for instance, in the reaction to the rating questions. All in all, surveys conducted by means of touch-screen terminals have proved to be an adequate and innovative method, in particular regarding the polling situations in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role, which a Value Added Network Provider could play in creating a Virtual Organisation in the travel industry. There is much hype surrounding the VO concept but very little in the way of empirical data. Subsequent to reviewing the theory relating to VO the author reviews two examples of VO, which are operational in the manufacturing sector and reflects on how this practice outside the travel industry could be applied within it. The paper presents an overview of what form a VO in the travel industry might take and concludes that the VANP occupies a pivotal role in the travel value chain and is in a natural position to assume the role as a broker of VO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a web based recommendation system aimed at supporting a user in building a personalized travel plan. A travel plan bundles together elementary travel components that are selected by the user in a mixed initiative way: the user poses queries and the recommender helps the user to reformulate the query and finally ranks the selected items. This paper concentrates on the methodological aspects that enable the interactive query refinement of the user queries, and in particular the intelligent relaxation of query constraints in case the query returns no items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of a travel planning process tourists are facing a complex information search and decision making process. The Internet, an ideal medium for information collection and processing, offers a wide range of tools to support this process. In many cases the main problem is to find an informative web page which provides information appropriate for a certain decision stage. Quo Vadis, an intelligent recommendation system described in this paper, is designed to guide travellers in different stages of the decision process in order to find the best matching web site. Its fundamental principles are a description and categorization of travel web sites to connect this with the user database at a later moment, user dialogue and a learning algorithm. In this paper an approach for categorizing travel web sites is described, as well as a following evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile multimedia services for mobile customers are among the services that are assigned a decisive importance for the future success of the third generation of mobile technologies. Travel and tourism is considered one of the major fields of application. Based on an extensive study on behalf of the German Ministry of Economics and Technology, this paper presents selected aspects of the status and future development of mobile multimedia services. It focuses on value-added services: Localization, personalization and payment are considered in regard of the role of mobile technologies in travel and tourism. In addition, scenarios were developed that introduce future areas of applications for mobile multimedia services, using the example of leisure travel. The aim of these scenarios is not to predict the future but to encourage discourse on the future use of mobile multimedia services. INSETS: Scenario of a day trip tourist;Scenario of a family vacation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will take a look at the ongoing transformation in the distribution structure for scheduled airline flights which has been deeply affected by the diffusion of the Web and, in particular, the emergence of new players, The market changes will be reconstructed from the different players' perspectives: -- airlines, -- CRS/GDS, -- new entrants such as Priceline, and -- travel agents. Based on empirical evidence, the paper reconstructs recent changes, scrutinizes driving forces, analyzes value propositions and proposes success factors. The analysis will focus on market parameters, especially the attractiveness of the market and the defendability of established positions. The disintermediation hypothesis is critically reviewed and contingency factors are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the results of a project named PICO on the organization of business activities in a tourism destination in the north of Italy: Trentino. The aim of PICO is introducing innovation and co-operation among tourism stakeholders of a mountain destination in Trentino. The objective of the paper is to examine the relationship between three main actors: different enterprise organizations, training activities, and ICT's, three fundamental elements focused on in PICO, and to identify how they can interact to create a Virtual Tourism Organization. The PICO project shows that the introduction of managing technological innovation and co-operation are preconditions to organize a Tourist Destination Organization involving the small and medium enterprises concerned. These single enterprises and the whole destination should be assisted in developing a co-operative system by way of consulting activity and training in the fields of management and technology as they do not have either the necessary skills, nor the necessary attitude to develop these systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of tourism electronic data interchange is of vital interest to most tourism enterprises. Especially small and medium sized enterprises are forced to interchange data with other competitors. The approach presented in this paper enables electronic data interchange based on the technologies XML, XSLT, XML Names and XPath. These technologies are recommended by W3C, well supported and free of charge. The general architecture presented is based on the idea, to enable an easy configurable EDI by transforming the data of an XML file of one tourism application into another XML file usable for another tourism application. An example clarifies the usage of the introduced concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing revenue through improving customer experience is the aim of modern hospitality organisations. Technology applications can assist hotel managers in building a sustainable competitive advantage by determining the lifetime value of their guests and promoting increasing customer loyalty. In the paper a methodological framework to analyse and profile hotel guests is discussed, focussing on the most important aspects that should be taken into account in designing the information grid on which the relational system database should be built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is the goal of the research project 'Benchmarking Information and Communication Applications for the purpose of Marketing and Sales in the Tourism Sector' to find out branch and regional specific basics for the strategic Benchmarking of public services and also to evaluate the availability and relevance of publicly accessible, regional data for a 'Benchmarking of the Regions'. This paper presents two aspects of the topic: Selected indicators of the capacity and occupancy of tourist accommodation as well as the use of Information and Communication Technologies in the European Regions are shown. Secondly, the results of a written questionnaire of European destination management organisations are described, regarding use of and experience with Information and Communication Technologies within these organisations. A comparison of these partial aspects shows, that within the European Union exists no correlation between infrastructure and use of technology on one hand and the spectrum of tasks and performances of the organisations on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide meaningful guidance for the development of human-centric travel decision-aid systems (TDAS). Issues related to TDAS are framed by who, why, when, what, and how questions and a summary model for designing a TDAS is proposed. It is suggested that TDAS needs to be adaptive to individual and dynamic in terms of what to recommend and how to make experiential aspect tangible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online selling and counseling in the tourism sector is still constricted mainly to simple travel products like hotel rooms or flight tickets. This paper tries to point out that personalized systems, the application of soft computing methods and the use of new technologies may contribute a great deal in furthering web-based marketing and selling of more complex tourism services, The prototype TourBO, developed at FORWIN (the Bavarian Information Systems Research Network. Germany), is introduced to illustrate possible approaches, e. g. a fuzzy logic based profiling module using stereotypes, a sightseeing tour generator relying on evolutionary algorithms, or location based services. Finally, the article gives an outlook on future works concerning the integration of group support tools into the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Producing interactive maps for internet applications in tourism has become widespread. But they are often quite simple in terms of adaptation to the user or context. We argue that it is not enough to focus on adaptations to technical parameters (device characteristics, QoS, location, ...), but propose that tourist maps need to be dynamically generated according to a wider range of variables from user preferences and interests, the given task, cultural aspects to communicative goals and actual context and location. This means that a system that is able to generate such maps needs to exploit user models and context knowledge. Within this paper, we focus on two aspects of LBS, i.e., using the spatial and personal context for proactive tips and generating personalized maps, by presenting an overview about possible parameters and propose a model for adaptive map generation and give examples of first prototypical realizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Semantic Web as the next generation web is the vision of having background knowledge about the meaning of web sources stored in a machine-processable and --interpretable way. The area of tourism is highly dynamic area that currently already extensively uses the available Internet technologies. However, the shortcomings of the existing technology are that information finding and extraction as well as the interpretation of the information contained in the web sources is left to the human user. In this paper it is shown how the vision of the Semantic Web and already existing Semantic Web technologies can be used for next-generation tourism information systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study about examining online hotel reservation services in travel web sites. Using a semi-systematic approach, 60 travel web sites, half are Asian based and the other half are North American based, are evaluated to determine their level of service provisions. The attributes selected for evaluations fall into 2 major categories: i) availability of various online hotel reservation facilities, and ii) user friendliness of online hotel reservations. Experimental results of a content based analysis indicate that the Asian based and the North American based travel web sites have achieved different outcomes, and that the North American based web sites outperform their Asian counterparts significantly in certain dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today there is a lot of money invested in IT-services that support the mobility of people and goods, e.g. Intelligent Transport Systems and Services (ITS) and Location Based Services (LBS). Mobile information technology is creating new and interesting opportunities for using IT in the tourism sector, e.g. the possibility to provide targeted destination information based on time and location. However, a problem with rapid technological development is that services and applications are being developed from a technical perspective. Although the technology is important the big challenge will be to make mobile technology useful and understandable for people. This implies that mobile information technology provides researchers and business and systems developers with new and interesting challenges. The aim of the paper is to discuss some of these challenges and the importance of the new mobile technology for the tourism sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Application Service Providers (ASPs) offer customer organizations to run applications hosted in remote vendor locations, through the Internet or leased lines, for a fixed monthly fee. This technology seemed appealing to small and medium-size organizations that find current information technology (IT) expensive and difficult to implement and maintain, yet the rate of ASP adoption is much slower than anticipated. This paper brings a case study of an Israeli software vendor, Silverbyte, who is offering Israeli hotels to become ASP customers, and is so far successful in both technology and profit. Silverbyte's business model is analyzed to assess driving and inhibiting factors, trying to shed light on key drivers leading to the success. Since the Israeli hospitality industry is similar to hospitality industries elsewhere, and by using Israel as an experimental environment, we suggest that lessons can be derived and applied in non-Israeli organizations, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to the introduction of information technology (IT) systems, tourism enterprises are faced with a number of new challenges. The Interact has resulted in more and more guests making their inquiries and reservations on-line. Reaction to on-line inquiries becomes extremly decisive. Therefore, response behavior becomes an essential factor of success for small- and medium-sized tourism enterprises. The objectives of the studies presented in this paper are twofold. Firstly, it was intended to test empirically response behavior to Internet requirements and to analyze the role of hotel size and category. In particular, response rate, response time, and information quality of answers (information depth) were studied. The second objective was to investigate the motivations to offer Internet services, current services and attitudes towards the Internet and related behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents results from a study about preferences for different information sources among package and non-package travelers. The information sources are divided into four main groups and a number of sub-categories. Six hypotheses are tested. The respondents in this study ranked the Internet is as the most useful information sources for non-package travel. For package travel the Internet is rank as number three. The most preferred source for this segment was brochures and direct contact with travel agents and tour-operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the definition of a new approach in the design and development process of a Tourism Information System (TIS) for a network of Small and Medium Tourism Enterprises (SMTEs) in Trentino, a region in the north of Italy. The dualism is referred to the different opportunities that the big and small tourist enterprises have in order to play their role in the global electronic marketplace. Thus, the construction of methodology to organise and manage the development life cycle, a strategy to reduce developing costs (modularity) and the use of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) could be the right choices in order to provide real inter-operability features. The present work is that of a pilot-project, which belongs to the research domain on IS and the state of the art on the use of EDI techniques (Electronic Data Interchange) and XML for heterogeneous TIS (ENTER Conferences in 1999, 2000 and 2001). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of knowledge-based tourism B2B communities requires the adoption of a multi-dimensional, multi-level perspective on system design that incorporates processes of knowledge creation and transformation and takes organizational stages of effective technology use into consideration. This paper illustrates how the Illinois Tourism Network (ITN) as an example for an interorganizational, knowledge-based tourism information system/community has successfully integrated the management of information and knowledge flows in a way that appeals to tourism organizations in different stages of effective technology use and fosters capacity building among community members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recommender systems for the travel and hospitality industries attempt to emulate offline travel agents by providing users with knowledgeable travel suggestions. The ultimate goal is to help the user in the travel planning phase trough offering a comfortable understanding of the options and also giving a select set of alternatives. This paper presents a novel approach for constructing such systems: a) creating a domain specific dialog model, b) semi-automatically building a knowledge base of ratings for the items of interest (i.e. destinations, airfare, hotel, vacation packages), and c) generating personalized recommendations ordered by relevancy. Items of interest are selected to best fit the needs of travelers, based on their individuality, interests and preferences. Explicit and tacit user feedback, as well as the extrapolation of individual user interests through attribute-based collaborative filtering, allows the system to learn rich profiles and refine its knowledge base, generating ever-improving recommendations. Empirical results confirm the hypothesis that recommender systems tend to accelerate the decision-making process by showing an improvement in look-to-buy ratios of up to 4.95 times, when compared to normal purchases on a ski travel e-commerce site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While efforts have been made to introduce standards for tourism information systems devoted to product promotion and distribution through a genetic data model, this has not occurred for business critical information systems. This paper reports on the development of an information model for Australia's Decipher business data warehouse project, and proposes that the National Tourism Information Model be adopted as a generic model for similar systems worldwide. The National Tourism Information Model has been derived through an analysis of elements of the tourism 'universe of discourse' apparent in perspectives of tourism as an activity, an industry, a system, and a field of research/study. A model consisting of 13 'constellations' and forty-two entities has been developed using common data modelling tools. The National Tourism Information Model performs well against criteria of simplicity/clarity, intuitiveness, and applicability. Further development of the Model will improve performance against criteria of comprehensiveness and non-redundancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates channel choice, particularly, how channel benefits are evaluated and realized in the information search and purchasing stages of the customer decision making process. The research revealed that customers have a different preference for the channel choice in the information search stage and booking stage. The distribution of channels within the Channel Benefits Portfolio model showed that most of channels are located in either Strategic or Support quadrant. This result suggests that there are only a few Key Operational channels as far as customers are concerned, which tends to suggest customers do not value channels unless they are critical to their decision making needs and is a subject for further investigation. The management implications of this channel benefits portfolio approach is that Internet based electronic business in tourism and hospitality companies need to identify the current and future channel benefits portfolio of their existing and prospective customers in order to be successful in the multichannel electronic commerce environment.

This section provides information on the 9th ENTER Conference. The conference will follow a tradition of sharing knowledge among researchers in the fields of tourism and information and communication technologies. The key objective of this conference are to disseminate findings, to learn more about each other and to exchange experiences on the development of new research theories and methodologies. When the organizing committee chose MultiChannel Strategies as a theme, it was also in the context of emerging new forms and standards in mobile communications that will have a lasting impact on economic and social prospects. consumers, who are increasingly mobile and better informed, are becoming more demanding in the electronic tourism world.

Small and micro tourism enterprises are living in a new situation, a market where consumer demands come from individual expression and differentiation, with greater emphasis than hitherto on quality and value for money, where globalisation, deregulation and liberalisation, and environmental pressures are fundamental influencing factors. SMTEs must, in this situation, adopt new strategies based on the differentiation and segmentation of well defined target groups, increased speed and flexibility of reaction to market changes, co-operation and association with other enterprises, and integration and co-ordination with other economic agents engaged (directly or indirectly) with tourism. A possible answer to this need of innovation and adjustment to the new economy can be an innovative model of e-learning that allows moments of collective comparison, knowledge and opinion exchange, group and co-operative work based on solution of common and urgent problems according to personalised training processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Available evidence indicates that while the larger players in the Australian tourism industry (the airlines, hotel chains etc.) have embraced all aspects of online technologies at a fairly rapid rate, the smaller players (the SMTEs) have reported a significantly slower uptake of e-business opportunities. The broad aim of the research reported here was to address some of the concerns relating to the uptake on online technologies by the SMTE sector; the key objective was to develop a model of technology transfer that could be used to encourage sustainable uptake of online technologies by SMTEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study intends to contribute to the understanding of online community by extending and empirically testing a conceptual framework of online community member needs. Members' views and perceptions on participating in online communities are examined; in addition, the relationships between members' needs and their level of involvement in online communities are identified. Factor analysis and reliability test indicate that the proposed conceptual framework is valid. The results of the regression analysis shows that social and psychological needs have positive effects on level of involvement while functional need has a negative effect. Discussion and implications are provided based on the study results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a study which analyzed the state of the art of Internet-marketing applications within official tourism organizations in Germany, the 16 Federal State Tourism Organization (FSTO). Summarizing the empirical findings, a main conclusion is that the potential created by the Internet remains nearly unused by the FSTO. But experts mentioned a rather positive level of fulfillment concerning their presentation expectations and a high utility level for the customer. This discrepancy may be explained by the FSTO point of view, as they nearly have a monopolized business position, being the only suppliers of information and services in the regional areas in Germany. They benchmark themselves with all other nearly monopolized FSTO, instead of creating visions and strategies to offer customer services at really sophisticated levels of utility, service and comfort.

Tourists are increasingly searching for an extensive offer of experiences without any engagements but providing them with value-added in terms of price advantages. DMOs not only use tourist cards as a sales and marketing tool, they have also realized their qualities for the collection of valuable data for customer relationship management. As the Tirol Tourist Board projects the introduction of the TirolCard for summer 2002, an online-survey placed on TIScover investigated acceptance and required design of such a destination card system for the destination Tyrol. Broad potential acceptance of a card system including general services and of the use of the Internet as an information and purchasing medium could be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

72 masters students of the Information Management program of Tilburg University studied the use of internet by companies in the Leisure industry. First they described 75 Dutch sites found on the www. Later they interviewed 41 site owners more in depth. The results of this research can be compared with the results of similar research describing the internet use of smaller travel agencies. Although the quality of the sites is not judged too bad there is little evidence of professional site management. Design and technical maintenance are often handed over to professionals but the results of the internet presence are hardly known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hong Kong Disneyland will open in 2005 and is likely to have an official web site. The objectives of the study are firstly, to understand the information types that the target markets would like to have. Also, the research is to study whether e-ticketing is feasible for the web site. Using a questionnaire and a convenience sampling method, 198 people were interviewed. The respondents all agreed that the suggested attributes should be listed in the web site. In addition, no significant difference was found among respondents of homepage information. However, significant differences were found among the interviewees regarding product/services information and ticketing information. To communicate effectively, the adoption of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) was recommended in a value-chain system for achieving successful e-commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the imbalance towards static research methodologies in tourism there is a lack of a comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the underlying trip planning and decision making process. With this study the authors transcend these boundaries of the traditional research tools. An observational study in three design variations was pursued to investigate the individual trip planning and information behaviour process from a dynamic point of view. The exploratory approach delivered six different decision styles which are deemed to be useful when setting up a new generation of IT-supported travel recommendation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web-based Tourism Information Systems (TIS) offer tourists an enormous quantity of information and data. But this amount of information is useless if a TIS does not offer adequate search functionalities, which support the tourist finding the most relevant data for each request. In this context two general problems can be identified. First, the tourist has only vague or ambiguous input information. Second, although the search criteria are exactly defined by the tourist, the result set provided by the TIS is empty, incomplete or not satisfying. Existing TIS support only conventional search functionalities and return only exact hits. Because of this these systems are far away to be error-tolerant, which is reflected in their hit ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although during the last years, tourism and hospitality enterprises have been increasingly investing in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), empirical studies have not persuasively established corresponding increases in productivity. In contrast, many studies investigating the ICT impact have found not significant relationship between productivity and ICT. However, several shortcomings have been identified in past studies, e.g. measurement errors, redistribution of impacts and mismanagement of ICT. This study proposes a framework for assessing the ICT productivity impact that overcomes these shortcomings and tests it by analyzing data gathered from the three star hotel sector in UK through a non parametric technique called DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis). Empirical findings revealed that productivity gains accrue not from ICT investments per se, but from the fully exploitation of ICT tools and capabilities. Productivity enhancing ICT applications and configurations are investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a novel method of Web content extraction, content analysis and data mining to obtain a thorough picture of the evolving competitive landscape in an important B2C application area -- the travel and tourism industry. For the first time findings of a comprehensive Web mining endeavor are combined with success criteria gained from a supplier survey which allows new insights in the effectiveness of tourism Web sites. Important dimensions of this measurement are the volume of textual and graphical information, the diversity of the language used (textual richness), ease of navigation, interactivity, reservation and booking features, and the number of language versions. Success is measured by the number of bookings and awareness of tourists after they have arrived at the destination. Findings suggest that multilingual content and interactive site features are crucial for the success of a tourism Web site. Differences between four European regions are provided. The opportunities to provide more meaningful benchmarks for Web site management are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the last decade in travel and tourism Web-based marketing. Specifically, the study reviews the history and background of early Web-based marketing efforts in travel and tourism and charts a progression to the present. Utilizing the Strauss and Corbin (1998) grounded theory technique as a guide, the top ten themes in Web-based marketing are generated using four research databases containing travel and tourism marketing articles. Based on the analyses of these articles, successes and failures of online travel and tourism business are identified. Examples involving travel and tourism Websites are used to illustrate various problems and issues. Current debates raging among industry professionals as to the state of travel and tourism Web-based marketing efforts are also discussed. The study then concludes with recommendations on how travel and tourism businesses can improve their Web-based marketing efforts. The limitations of the study and possible follow-up studies for the future are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on methodology and results from a market research carried out as part of the TellMaris project and describes how new technology being developed in TellMaris can improve the services of destination management organizations and thus their position in the value chain, as of January 2001. The results from the first phase of the market research in TellMaris clearly illustrated the need for better tourism information on portable media like personal digital assistants (PDA) and mobile phones. Improved information services under the trip will also, referring to the results, influence the tourism behavior. Attractive harbors and destinations will thus have a competitive advantage if they distribute interactive tourism information available on portable media lie PDA.

This article focuses on semantic network analysis as a means to investigate issues of usability of the Internet for travel information search. Usability of the Internet is viewed as the degree of match between mental models of information providers and information users, which are based on their understanding of information structure and information content on the Internet. The mismatch of mental models between the tourism marketers and the travelers contributes to the poor usability of the Internet as a travel information source. This preliminary study focuses attention on one actor, the travel information provider, in order to gain insight into how they use the Internet for marketing purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The price at which a product is offered for sale has been identified as one of the key motivators for encouraging customers to purchase online. This study represents the first significant investigation of the electronic pricing strategies of the major international hotel companies, and analyses the rates offered by hotels across five of the major online distribution channels. Key findings include that hotel brands currently use multiple simultaneous routes to the marketplace, and that the rates offered over these routes have to a large extent become equal. However significant differences can be observed depending on the market segment being serviced by the brand, with direct online channels being consistently cheaper for economy and mid-priced properties and online GDS based intermediaries offering the best value at the luxury end of the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile users such as tourists require mobile services. Handheld devices enable access to a variety of gavel-related services. The limited capacity of handheld devices as well as other issues of wireless access to Internet content and heterogeneous services, however, impose usability issues that ask for intelligent new solutions. Personalisation, location awareness, interaction facilitation and service mediation are key features of the CRUMPET system. Its realisation as an agent architecture based on the FIPA-OS agent platform has interesting additional advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses research being done on the drivers for change and the conditions and effects of it brought about by the incorporation of a virtual learning environment (VLE) within an undergraduate tourism module in the School of Management Studies for the Service Sector at the University of Surrey in England, as of January 2001. This first application of a business research model VLE is considered a success, with clear benefits for all concerned. The Teaching and Learning Support Units note that the module has become a useful case study for good practice in collaborative course development between its members, students and academic staff within the university. However, it is recognized that whilst the VLE worked well in this case, there are many change management issue to address at the ground level.

81 educators from all over the world were surveyed for exploring whether and how they use the Internet in instructing their hospitality and tourism management courses. The majority educators teaching hospitality and tourism management courses uses the Internet in their instruction, but at different levels and approaches. The most reported applications of the Internet were: searching the Internet for information/data, gathering data about a specific company, retrieving an article, reading or downloading homework problems, downloading real-life case studies and downloading a syllabus. The most common reasons for not using the Internet as part of course pedagogy were: lack of student access to computer laboratory resources, lack of faculty training in Internet-related areas, lack of relevant Websites, and faculty not being convinced about the learning students receive from Internet use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SMART-UP, an IST financed Take-up project, provides small and medium sized tourism enterprises (SMTEs) with up-to-date tourism management know-how through modern information technologies. Initially, 4 participating know-how providing universities, in 4 different European countries, together with the SME end users have identified main knowledge gaps and designed learning modules which will be integrated into a virtual learning company. The contents are complemented by constantly updated benchmarking solutions and chat facilities. The use of an information technology system as a learning tool ensures a fast and cheap know-how exchange among SMTEs and know-how providers. Employing intelligent agent technology for this learning system also facilitates know-how transfer amongst tourism SMEs and know-how producers throughout Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a tradition of destination management research which recognises the value in taking a holistic view of the Destination Management System and using IT to 'manage' tourism activity within a destination. However the reality is that the concept of a holistic DMS for tourism becomes subsumed into one of the many Destination Marketing Systems found worldwide. These limitations have been recognised and such systems undermine the core principles of a DMS, (Buhalis, 2001) This research demonstrates a field method for auditing and appraising the Urban environment with could lead to the development of DMS for the City of Sheffield. A spatial analysis identifies areas of 'enclave' business tourism in the City and the operations of hospitality businesses are analysed. The conclusion discusses the utility of a more holistic approach to Destination Management Systems using an IT based database. However adopting this approach comes at a price since it challenges core principles held by destination stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to determine ways independent Internet marketplace providers and especially those in tourism generate their revenues. The right time has come for TIScover to change from a pure subscription fee model to a model with transaction fees. In Austria, where due to the Internet marketplace of TIScover the volume of online bookings of hotels and accommodations is quite higher than in the other examined countries, There is only a little majority voting for a transaction fee model. In the other countries, a clear majority favored the transaction fee model. From a point of view of hotel and accommodations this is logical, because for them a transaction fee solution results cheaper, as long as the level of online bookings does not reach the critical point.

In 1998, the Scottish Tourist Board sought to 'develop a 'real time' database covering all tourism products and services throughout Scotland through visitscotland.com'. Since then over €3m has been invested in this project with some 15,000 businesses and 17,500 products covering the whole spectrum of tourism business now searchable through the Web. The claim has been that there would be an increase in business being generated, initially with bookings through the more traditional channels such as telephone, fax, mail as well as e-mail and the there has also been the anticipation that the official national tourist board website would generate significant additional business. There have been little data to substantiate this viewpoint and this study sought to establish a methodology to derive preliminary baseline performance data in terms of tourism volumes, values and look-to-book ratios. The analysis provides tourism volume, value and conversion ratios which are compared with others available in the sector. The outcomes will be of interest to those concerned with the performance of tourism websites in general and destination-defined websites such as DMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]