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Different approaches and programs for qualitative simulation are briefly revised to illustrate the characteristic features of QUALSIM, an object oriented package for supporting the identification of the structure of dynamic systems. The package is based on a qualitative interface and a stochastic calculus using variables' ranges defined in the real number space. The intuitive way of defining variables and connections and the possibility of avoiding the definition of equations linking the variables allow to use the package as a fast model prototyping and an educational tool. The identification of a model of lake eutrophication is shown as an example.

This essay serves as a response to Cai and McKenna's Letter to the Editor (2020) recently published in the Journal of Travel Research, which sought to initiate a discussion regarding the nature and future of research related to information technology and tourism (ITT). The authors argued that ITT is a subfield of information systems (IS) and ITT research is narrowly defined, self-referential, and focused on application, rather than building theory. In this essay, we challenge the authors' basic assumptions as well as their supportive evidence. We argue that ITT, as an intersection between IT and tourism, is a well-developed, multidisciplinary field and has contributed substantially to tourism research and beyond. Furthermore, we offer a vision of future ITT research that aims to engage with much wider conversations about innovation, sustainability, well-being, quality of life, smart governance, and resilience, particularly in response to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Markus Gratzer, Hannes Werthner, Werner Winiwarter The web changes commercial activities such as information gathering, shopping, trading, collaboration, and distribution to which companies need to adapt their strategies. The importance of information and communication technology (ICT), especially of the internet in the travel and tourism industry has increased tremendously over the past few years. The travel and tourism area is one of those industries, which are able to gain enormous synergy effects from use of the internet. The research projects at the ec3 focus on the tourism area from different perspectives. This paper provides an overview of the work within the xCom project in this research area by looking at trends and developments within the eTourism area. We give an overview of the travel and tourism industry and the changes caused by ICT. These changes lead to several threats and opportunities which will be outlined in our 'competitive advantage in eTourism' framework.

Social recommender systems exploit two sources of information for making recommendations, the historical rating behavior of users, and the social connections among them. The basic assumption is that if two users are friends, they are likely to share similar preferences. Many recommendation approaches are based on such correlations between the rating and the social behavior of users. However, there is little work in studying whether there actually exist such correlations and how strong they are. In our work, we look at the two views of user behavior, their social connections, and their history of ratings, and investigate two research questions. The first examines if strong activity in one view, e.g., having many friends, implies strong activity in the other view, e.g., having rated many items. The second investigates whether high similarity in one view, e.g., network similarity, implies high similarity in the other view, e.g., rating similarity. We employ various notions of activity and similarity, and identify those that appear to have the stronger impact. Specifically, to some degree, we find that rating behavior determines social behavior, and that the opposite relationship is weaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using digital ecosystems and smart business networks as conceptual building blocks, this paper defines, describes and illustrates the idea of a smart tourism ecosystem (STE). It further draws on conceptualizations of smart technologies, smart cities and smart tourism to envision new ways in which value is created, exchanged and consumed in the STE. Technologies essential to the functioning of an STE are described and it is argued that data emerging from these technologies are the driver for new business models, interaction paradigms and even new species. Critical questions regarding the need for regulatory intervention and innovative research are raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network analysis methods have gained much attention in the last few years and have provided a wealth of insights into the structural and dynamic properties of many systems. Here, we apply these methods to the study of tourism destinations' Web spaces. This exploratory analysis aims at showing how these techniques can be used and what outcomes can be obtained. After a short introduction to network analysis and a brief review of the literature, two cases are presented, namely Austria as a whole country, and a smaller destination within Italy: the island of Elba. For each case, data collection methods are described and the characteristic network parameters are calculated. The comparison between the two cases highlights both similarities and differences, which are described and interpreted. Finally, the limitations of this approach are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article performs a content analysis on the first 10 volumes of Information Technology & Tourism. A total of 144 articles are classified by six different categories. To identify trends and patterns in themes, the analysis is split into various periods. The objectives of this study include taking a look at the history of the journal to see what progress the scientific information technology and tourism community is making in their field. The data support the authors' early impressions of ITT as a primarily interdisciplinary journal dealing largely with human--computer interaction-related issues with an increasing number of articles dealing with business models recently. In addition, the distribution of articles by countries suggests that ITT has become a truly international journal reflecting studies from all parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the research project SEMAMO (Semantic Market Monitoring) is to make use of the increasingly growing information available at Web-based sales and marketing channels for market research. This is accomplished by using semiautomatic analyses in combination with semantic domain models, where the latter guide the statistical processing flow and the statistical results feed back to the domain model. SEMAMO is based on the assumption that the Web may serve as a "picture" of the reality and that the respective online channels map--in an accurate and timely manner--market developments in terms of product descriptions, distribution, promotions, and price developments. In this article we describe the background as well as the general approach and report on our first results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A main obstacle to e-commerce is the well-known "interoperability problem." Different players have different views of the world, even in the same application field. This is particularly true in the travel and tourism e-market where IT has been applied for a long time, leading to a plethora of different information systems, each with its own data model and structure. In this article we describe the approach followed in "HARMO-TEN," a European project aimed at solve the data heterogeneity problem by setting up a "virtual interoperable network" and providing the participants with a technological infrastructure based on a shared ontology. This will allow exchanging information in a seamless way while keeping existing data models unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual design and a prototype implementation of a knowledge based interactive genera tor of simulation models is pre sented. The system administrates several components, among them a model base, a knowledge-base, and a data base. Emphasis is laid on the integration of the model and the knowledge base. This connection of numeric and knowledge representa tion components is one of the main advantages of the system. A frame based approach has been chosen for the semantic representation of the simulated models. The prototype has been implemented on a XEROX 1186 workstation and takes advan tage of the presence of two proces sors : a LISP processor managing the logical description, selection, and maintenance of models as well as the overall control of the system, and an 8088 processor to run the simulation programs that are written in classical programming languages like FORTRAN. The system is designed to free the scien tific expert from details about computer science and to let him concentrate on the actual simulation problems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Explores the applications of artificial intelligence to tourism. Features of the tourism industry that explain its importance for economic development and its inclination toward information technology systems; Challenges for intelligent systems in tourism; Importance of e-tourism.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one report which identifies the challenges of information extraction from heterogeneous resources, another report which deals with a semantic market monitoring project, as well as a report on an exploratory study on intermediary websites.