LoTour: Using Technology to Provide Competitive Advantage in Local Tourism Industries

LoTour: Using Technology to Provide Competitive Advantage in Local Tourism Industries

Marcos Ruano-Mayoral, Ricardo Colomo-Palacios, Pedro Soto-Acosta, Ángel García-Crespo
Copyright: © 2012 |Pages: 10
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61350-192-4.ch002
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Abstract

The Internet has brought a radical change in the way tourism services are conceived. In this new scenario, not only has attracting tourists been modified over the Internet, but the provision of tourism services have been altered. Thus, the different factors of tourist services are in a new environment and they should operate in a coordinated manner to increase the value of tourism, to keep current tourists and attract new ones. With this aim, LoTour, the architecture presented in this chapter provides a platform for the integration of different services, provides comprehensive information on the tourist destination from the context (location, time of day, season, weather, etc) and the profile of the tourist.
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State Of The Art

Because tourism is an information intensive business, there are opportunities to apply information technology to support tourism and tourists (Watson et al., 2004). The integration of tourism with the technology is an indisputable fact in the twenty-first century. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) crucially impact travelers’ knowledge, attitudes and behavior. Thus, the interaction of technology in tourism is reflected in different phases: before, during, and after the visit. LoTour is conceived as a solution capable of providing added value to the tourist experience through the combination of three distinct technologies or philosophies: Customer Relationship Management, Mobile Computation and Context Aware Systems. In this section we deal with each in relation to integration with tourism. The goal is to place LoTour from previous efforts and define this new platform from the analysis of the opportunities that research has not yet covered satisfactorily.

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