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Top1. Introduction
Tourism sector is among the first adopters of all novelties developed by ICT and mobile technology industry, thus customers’ needs were always the main determinant to updating touristic service offers. Tourism sector moved from the traditional offline environment to the digital environment in terms of e-tourism and subsequently in mobile-tourism, according to history of tourism industry delineates the gradual progress made by touristic entities.
The field of tourism has been greatly influenced by the internet, which has led to the emergence of new trends in the pursuit for e-tourism (Neidhardt, Rümmele, & Werthner, 2017). Tourism industry has continuously experienced fast and huge transformations due to the emergence of mobile technologies and ICT industry. This transformation has changed tourists’ consumption behavior in relation to their access and usage of information specific to this sector. The reconfiguration distribution service and product of tourism, in terms of their transformation to the mobile environment was imposed by the increased mobility of tourists who used technology and mobile devices.
Tourism has a significant impact on the Egyptian economy, where it represents 13 percent of GDP. There is a strong linkage between tourism and other local economic business opportunities for people especially in cities that are close to tourist sites, which will ultimately have a positive influence on tourism activities. In addition, the local economy could develop more opportunities for local tourism companies and benefit from the tourist’s demand for goods and services, to help provide the best tourism facilities.
However, after the 2011 revolution, the statistics showed that the number of tourists decreased significantly by 37 percent to reach “9 million” tourist, compared to the number of tourists in 2010 which was 14 million tourist (Hanaa A. Fayed, 2013). The political and economic disturbance that followed the revolution had a negative impact on all fields of Egyptian economy, especially tourism and related fields such as local travel and flight transportation (Hanaa A. Fayed, 2013).
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has now converted tourism to another level of global domain, as ICT has a great impact on changing not only business practices, but also the structure of the tourism industry (Porter, 2001). There has been a noticeable change where the ICT field has placed particular emphasis on the creation and expansion of services and tools which facilitates interaction between market participants at a global standard. Not only the number of tourists who use technology to plan and document their own trips via the internet all over the world has increased but also influenced by the search engine enhancements, the transportation amplitudes and the rapidity of the networks (Condratov, 2013).
While most common and influential type of tourism in Egypt is cultural (Mokhlis, 2009), different needs of tourists needs to be fulfilled in their travel such as booking flights, arranging journeys, hotels, restaurants, transportation...etc.;, therefore, an emerging e-commerce type of tourism which is called e-tourism could be of a big help.
Every year the number of hours spent on the internet continues to increase according to the 2019 Mary Meeker report, however the difference between desktop and mobile is becoming more perspicuous. In 2018, studies proved that the Americans spent 3.6 hours per day on mobile with an increase by 12 times more than a decade prior and spent 2 hours per day on a desktop or laptop. In 2020, E-marketer predicted increasing in hours of using mobile internet to reach about 4 hours per day and increasing by 88% in the time spent in mobile apps, rather than a browser. This reflects the importance of not only optimizing the companies’ mobile websites but creating custom responsive apps as well.
The development of mobile applications has been growing for more than half a decade, ever since the first appearance of the very first app store in July 2008. It broadens the meaning of tourism business, where consumers have now the opportunity to share their experiences in real-time with family, friends and colleagues. This can create an environment where application users can get new ideas from other users as there is shared experience.