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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]

The core product of tourism is experience and therefore is inherently emotional in nature. As such, online storytelling has become an essential destination promotion strategy as it effectively conveys information while at the same time builds emotional connections with potential travelers by encouraging imagination and involvement. Understanding and measuring travelers' emotional responses to online stories are essential to developing effective advertising strategies. Traditionally, the self-report approach has been employed whereby informants are asked to identify their emotions. With the development of advanced machine learning techniques, new tools such as sentiment analysis have been developed to detect the emotions conveyed by text. In this study, we summarized the results of a comparative analysis of emotion detection using both self-report method and sentiment analysis. The results show general consistency between the two approaches in terms of overall descriptive statistics as well as the relationships between emotions and various components of advertising response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversion studies are a standard technique by which marketers evaluate advertisement effectiveness. A review of the tourism literature finds that advertising conversion studies use a number of metrics that have evolved to include most aspects of visitor decisions; however, this literature also indicates that there are few comparative studies focusing on the variability of response. The overall goal of this study is to identify and compare estimates of impact on visitor expenditures using four different approaches ranging from traditional advertising models (i.e., gross conversion rate and net conversion rate) to a more comprehensive facets-based destination advertisement response (DAR) model. The various models result in a huge range of impact estimates and it is concluded that the DAR model offers, both theoretically and practically, a powerful framework for evaluating advertising response in that it incorporates the possibility that destination advertising affects decisions related to a range of trip-related activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although online surveys enable researchers to quickly and easily conduct advertising conversion studies, data obtained from online surveys are potentially problematic because of nonresponse bias. This study builds on earlier research concerning nonresponse bias in Internet-based tourism advertising studies using a number of different destinations across a number of years; in particular, this study uses the Propensity Score Adjustment approach to adjust for potential nonresponse bias in the collected data. The results of this study clearly indicate that online surveys generally result in relatively small errors when estimating conversion rates and various aspects of traveler behavior. However, this study additionally indicates that potential nonresponse biases are not consistent across advertising programs and survey waves, suggesting that destination marketers should put more effort into understanding response bias so as to represent the total target markets more accurately. To do so, destination marketing organizations and practitioners need to collect auxiliary variables that help to adjust potential nonresponse bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With recent developments in social media and mobile computing, little is known regarding how different travel segments within the general traveler population actually use the Internet for travel planning. In particular, this study examined various aspects of Internet use among four generational groups including the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y over a six-year period. Findings show a high adoption rate of the Internet among all generations but there are important differences related to information search, trip planning activities, and websites used for online booking. This study provides a timely analysis of information technology use for travel planning and offers meaningful insights for the development of communication strategies for destinations and tourism businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile phones have evolved to be smart computers (smartphones) supporting a wide range of information services that can be accessed anytime and from (almost) anywhere. With the increasing number of users and greater incursion into people’s life, smartphones have the potential to significantly influence the touristic experience. This study explores the mediation mechanisms of smartphones by examining stories provided by travelers related to their use of smartphones (and associated applications) for traveling purposes. The results reveal that smartphones can change tourists’ behavior and emotional states by addressing a wide variety of information needs; in particular, the instant information support of smartphones enables tourists to more effectively solve problems, share experiences, and “store” memories. The implications of these findings are important in that they suggest a huge potential for smartphones in changing many aspects of the tourism business. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A conceptual model of travellers' unplanned attraction visits is proposed based upon the literature related to intention-behaviour discrepancy and prospect theory and a survey of 551 travellers was used to test the proposed model. The results of the study indicate that unplanned en route decisions are significant parts of travel in terms of the number of attractions visited and the length of stay. Also, trip and traveller characteristics have a significant indirect effect on the number of unplanned attraction visits made. The results focus attention on the importance of on-site stimuli that can be used to evoke unplanned stops. [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]

With the huge amount of information available on the Internet and the increasing importance of online search, understanding the tourism domain is essential for effective online marketing. This study focuses on the semantic representation of the tourism domain with respect to information provided on tourism-related Web sites and travelers' information needs as expressed through search engine queries. The results show that huge discrepancies exist between the domain ontology derived from tourism Web sites and the one emerging from user queries. This study offers useful insights into the challenge of representing tourism products and services through Web sites and provides directions for developing Internet-based systems that can better support travel planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growing importance of the Internet for travel planning, understanding the online domain of tourism is vital in order to identify the challenges and potential solutions for effectively marketing travel destinations. This study focuses attention on understanding the representation of the tourism domain on the Internet. Analyses of search results from a major search engine were conducted in order to assess: 1) the visibility of destination-related information; 2) the visibility of various industry sectors within destinations; and 3) the power structure of websites that represent a specific destination. The results show that although there is a huge amount of information indexed, travelers can only access a tiny fraction of the domain. Also, there are a relatively small number of websites dominating the search results. This study provides a number of important insights into the challenges facing the tourism industry with respect to representing a destination online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to use existing theories of technology and organizational change to assess the impact of technology implementation within the context of the tourism industry. The framework is applied as a case study to analyze the perceived implications of implementing a destination marketing information system by the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. The results of the study indicate that the most important value of the system is the richness and timeliness of information. The key informants perceive that this system will not only impact the marketing activities at the organization but will not influence the overall organizational activities. Finally, this article discusses the importance of these findings for destination marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a marketing tool recommender systems have the potential to provide relevant and highly personalized information to consumers. However, developing effective recommender systems requires a substantive understanding of consumers’ preferences as well as meaningful ways to represent hospitality and travel products. This paper argues that language holds the key to understanding consumer preferences and therefore developing effective online recommender systems. Specifically, it explores the nature of the language used by consumers to describe their dining experiences in contrast to the language used by restaurant websites. The findings indicate that consumers use substantially different vocabularies from restaurant websites to describe dining experiences. This study provides implications for developing online recommender systems for restaurants as well as general hospitality and travel products. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Threats in the external environment and changes in the industry's markets and structures have challenged destination marketing organizations to change in fundamental ways. The strategic responses to these developments are essentially decisions to proactively shape, adapt to, or passively struggle through a crisis. Envisioning the future of tourism and examining possible ways of reaching various future scenarios are essential exercises in this process of deciding which strategic approach to adopt. In response to the increasing need for new visions of the future of tourism and particularly destination marketing, leading destination marketers from the midwestern United States were invited to participate in a large focus group to discuss the specific challenges encountered by their organizations. This article summarizes the issues raised and their implications for destination marketing organizations as well as tourism research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to examine the current use and predict future Web-based marketing activities of U.S. convention and visitor bureaus. A survey was sent to 600 randomly selected American convention and visitor bureaus with a focus on assessing the applications included in the bureaus' Web sites, their Web site promotion techniques, and customer relationship management programs in relation to these Web sites. The results indicate that most bureaus' Internet marketing activities are relatively limited, focusing on providing travel information to prospective visitors. Future trends of Internet marketing activities were then evaluated using change propensity analysis (CPA) and suggest a number of emerging activities that will be adopted during the next few years. The implications of the findings are then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

META tags can be used as information snippets to provide navigation cues for trip planning on search engines. It is argued that, from a marketing perspective, they are useful means by which destination organizations convey persuasive messages to travelers. This study examines the extent to which "description" META tags are used on websites owned by destination marketing organizations in the Northeastern US. Content analysis of these META tags clearly confirms this argument and identifies the persuasive nature of these messages. Finally, managerial implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: As American convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) passed the turn of the new millennium, advancements in information technology (IT) have made possible approaches to improve communication, coordination, and collaboration that were previously unimagined. Using a case study methodology this study sought to develop an evolutionary model for IT use by American CVBs. The results provide insight into the current status of IT use in American CVBs and the short-term challenges faced by these organizations. It was found that organizational capability influences IT use and leads to distinct implementation effects. Additionally, advancements in IT did not spread uniformly across four information activity dimensions and appear to occur in five recursive and sequential stages, namely: substitution, enlargement, gestation, reconfiguration, and setback. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study seeks to understand the nature of travelers' decisions to visit multiple destinations during a trip. In order to do so, this study frames travelers' multidestination travel decisions as a result of the specifics of a trip, traveler characteristics, and destination characteristics. For empirical investigation, the spatial behavior of Japanese travelers to the United States of America (US) was examined. Published US In-flight survey data from 1997 were used to test the study propositions. Analysis focused on the influence of independent variables on the probability of visiting multiple states as compared to visiting a single state and, for multidestination trips, the likelihood of visiting more than one destination within a state versus across multiple states. The results of logistic analyses indicate that Japanese travelers' likelihood of visiting more than one state in the US significantly differ by gender, age, the number of activities undertaken, the number of transportation types used, trip length, main purpose of trip, and by main destination region The probability of visiting multiple destinations across states, in comparison to within a state, for Japanese travelers is significantly influenced by the number of previous visits to the US, the characteristics of the region in which the first stop was made, and main purpose of trip. This study suggests that considerations of destination characteristics, in addition to the specifics of trip and traveler characteristics, needs to be made in modeling approaches to travelers' multidestination travel decisions. This study also argues that a travel decision to visit more than a destination within a state in the US represents a different decision task for Japanese travelers from multidestination travel across several states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On travel-related websites interface metaphors can help travelers plan their trips and make the trip planning process more entertaining and engaging. This study first conceptualizes interface metaphors on travel-related websites by providing a taxonomic analysis based on their functional roles. It then examines the extent to which interface metaphors influence users' perceptions of website usability and their overall experiences when using search engines for planning a trip through an online test. Findings show that interface metaphors significantly affect users' perceptions of system usability and their overall experience with a web site. Last, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online travel community has been considered central to models of Internet marketing and electronic commerce in the travel industry. The successful operation of an online travel community depends on the understanding of member participation in and active contribution to the online travel community. This study evaluates an integrated model of an online travel community using structural equation modeling. The results of the study indicate that participation in the travel community is driven mainly by social and hedonic benefits, while level of active contribution can be explained by three instrumental, efficacy, and expectancy related incentives. Implications for the development of a dynamic and sustainable online travel community are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contributes to the understanding of online travel communities by extending and empirically testing a conceptual framework of online travel community member needs. Specifically, the relationships between member needs and their level of participation in an online travel community are examined; in addition, the effects of duration of membership on the level of participation and the role of demographic differences in terms of member needs and participation are explored. The results show that social and hedonic needs have positive effects on level of participation while functional need has a negative effect. Membership status had an influence on level of participation and demographic characteristics were found to play important roles in terms of member needs and participation in online communities. Implications of these findings are discussed as they provide important guidelines for the development of online travel communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current efforts in destination recommendation systems research and design are based on the assumption that user preferences have to be captured in the most accurate way possible to be able to provide useful recommendations. However, leading the user through a series of mind-puzzling diagnostic questions is often cumbersome and, therefore, discourages use. This article explores travel personality categories as a possible shortcut to classifying users. The results a this study suggest that travel personality types selected by the survey respondents can, indeed, be matched up with certain travel behaviors. Implications for future research as well as systems design are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores multidestination travel patterns within the context of domestic travel in the United States based on the 1995 American Travel Survey household data. The results of a series of analyses show that a relatively high proportion of pleasure travel in the United States includes visits to multiple destinations; further analyses identify various patterns of multidestination travel. The findings indicate that destination marketing organizations need to identify specific destinations that can be strategically bundled to improve their marketing efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of knowledge-based tourism business-to-business (B2B) communities requires the adoption of a multidimensional, multilevel perspective on system design that incorporates processes of knowledge creation and transformation and takes organizational stages of effective technology use into consideration. This article 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]

Discusses the use of Internet technology by American convention and visitors bureaus. Stages of information technology (IT) use; Properties that can be used to distinguish small to medium-sized tourism organizations from their larger counterparts in the U.S.; Factors of a user-based IT model; Comparison of technology impact by adopter group.

Tourism has become a major source of employment, revenue, international awareness and opportunity in European cities. As competition among European cities grows, the efficiency of management in city tourism organisations (CTOs) becomes increasingly important. This article reports on a longitudinal study of 50 European CTOs over the 4-year period from 1995 to 1999. The aim of the study is to examine the changes in functions provided by European CTOs during the given period of time. Findings reveal that five identifiable function categories can characterise the changes that happened during the given period of time: hotel booking service, commerce, conventional information dissemination, advanced information product and relationship management. It is argued that information technology and role change are the main driving forces of these changes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of community has been a central element of the Internet since its inception. Though research on virtual communities have been extensive the concept appears to be ill defined and the understanding of members’ needs remains fragmented. The purpose of this article is to identify a theoretical foundation of the concept of a virtual tourist community based upon the core characteristics of a virtual communities and the fundamental needs of community members. Perspectives of how one can define and interpret virtual communities within the tourism industry are discussed and issues related to the functions of virtual communities are explored from the member''s viewpoint. Implications are made regarding virtual communities in the travel industry from marketing and design perspectives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since the 1970s, economic restructuring and the farm crisis have reduced rural communities' economic opportunities. These changes have limited rural communities' economic development options, making older development strategies less viable and forcing many to look for nontraditional ways to sustain themselves. One of the most popular nontraditional rural development strategies has been tourism and its associated entrepreneurship opportunities because of tourism's ability to bring in dollars and to generate jobs and support retail growth. The purpose of this study was to identify and examine those factors that have helped rural communities successfully develop tourism and its entrepreneurship opportunities. Several focus groups were conducted with local businesspersons and leaders in six rural Illinois communities. The results clearly demonstrate the importance of the community approach to tourism development and that rural tourism development and entrepreneurship cannot work without the participation and collaboration of businesspersons directly and indirectly involved in tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study which examines service quality expectation differences among three stakeholder groups involved in the tourism service encounter and the degree to which service climate may explain these differences. Conceptualizing service quality; Role of the service climate; Objectives of the study; How managers, employees, and visitors contributed to the study.

Highlights the issues concerning the Lue, Crompton, and Stewart (LCS) tourism research. Definition of the concepts of cumulative attractivity; Measurement of cumulative attractivity effects in an experiment design; Results that may occur for the wrong reason.

Suggests narratives as a means to organize and display tourist information in a way that can communicate the different aspects of tourism experiences. Limitations of the database approach's dominance in tourism interface design; Definition of narratives; Alternative strategies for integrating narrative design concepts into tourism information systems.

The article discusses the subjects covered within the issue of "Information Technology & Tourism."