Intelligent Technologies for Tourism

Introduction

Nowadays, the tourism industry is a consumer of a diverse range of information (Buhalis & O’Connor, 2005). Information communication technologies (ICTs) play a critical role for the competitiveness of tourism organizations and destinations. According to Staab and Werthner (2002), ICTs are having the effect of changing:

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  The ways in which tourism companies contact their business; reservations and information management systems;

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  The ways tourism companies communicate; how customers look for information on, and purchase travel goods and services.

In the tourism industry, the supply and demand sides form a worldwide network in which tourism product’s generation and distribution are closely worked together. Most tourism products (e.g., hotel rooms or flight tickets) are time constrained and nonstockable. Generally, the tourism product is both “perishable” and “complex,” and itself is a bundle of basic products aggregated by intermediaries. Consequently, basic products must have well-defined interfaces with respect to consumer needs, prices, or distribution channels. In addition, a tourism product cannot be tested and controlled in advance. During decision-making, only an abstract model of the product (e.g., its description) is available. Besides, the tourism industry has a heterogeneous nature, and a strong small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) base. Undoubtedly, intelligent technologies are increasingly changing the nature of, and processes in, the tourism industry. This chapter reviews, in brief, such technologies applied to the e-tourism domain.

Background

E-tourism is defined as the use of ICTs in the tourism industry. It involves the buying and selling of tourism products and services via electronic channels, such as the Internet, cable TV, and so forth. E-tourism includes all intranet, extranet, and Internet applications, as well as all the strategic management and marketing issues related to the use of technology. ICTs include the entire range of electronic tools that facilitate the operational and strategic management of organizations by enabling them to manage their information, functions, and processes, as well as to communicate interactively with their stakeholders for achieving their mission and objectives. Currently, e-tourism makes use of (syntactic) Web technology for tours, infrastructure, related interesting information, such as public transport, timetables, weather, online reservation, and so forth. However, the major barriers using the syntactic Web are:

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  Creating complex queries involving background knowledge on tourism issues.

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  Solving ambiguities and synonyms.

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  Finding and using Web services for tourism

From another perspective, the characteristics of the tourism product require information on the consumers’ and suppliers’ sides, involving high information search costs and causing informational market imperfections. These outcomes sequentially lead to the establishment of specific product distribution information and value-adding chains. Given such a framework, Staab and Werthner (2002) state that intelligent Information Systems (ISs) should:

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  Be heterogeneous, distributed, and cooperative.

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  Enable full autonomy of the respective participants.

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  Support the entire consumer life cycle and all business phases.

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  Allow dynamic network configurations.

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  Provide intelligence for customers (tourists) and suppliers as well as in the network.

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  Be scalable and open.

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  Focus on mobile communication enabling multichannel distribution.

Hereafter, we present intelligent technologies for tourism.