Regional Tourism and the Internet: E-Business Structures for Regional Tourism Organisations

Abstract

Tourism, and especially regional tourism, is facing the same challenges that have emerged in most industry sectors as a result of online technology availability. There are concerns that access to tourism products are likely to be impeded if online technologies are not effectively employed by the whole tourism industry in Australia. A common understanding of the purpose of engaging online is critical to the development of sustainable models for regional tourism organisations. This paper discusses a case where FRANK (The Framework of Regional Tourism and Network Knowledge) was used to help a tourism organisation describe their approach to E-business development. The framework emerges from the four considerations discussed in this paper: governance, value adding, positioning and evaluation.