IT Issues in Tourism - Essay Example

IT in Tourism Contents Introduction IT in Tourism Transport Sector Accommodation Sector Attraction Sector Role of IT Conclusion Introduction Tourism holds an all important place in any countries development both internally and economically. Tourism also ranks among the top trades on the international scale. Tourism is held of high importance by any nation. Tourism is directly proportional to the number of beautiful scenes and the number of monuments and historic monuments (Nadkarni, 2003). Tourism has certain characteristics which are very difficult to be defined with a reasonable accuracy. There is a lot of information flowing in the tourism industry that it is difficult to handle such vast information. The tourism industry just keeps growing bigger and larger every year. A large amount national income comes from the tourism industry. Such vast amounts of information and data have to be stored and processed and should be distributed to the customers as efficiently as possible. Information technology plays a very important role in the tourism industry because through the use of information technology, several devices can be implemented which are used to store large amounts of information. Tourism industry was never a very renowned industry and people were not very interested in tourism industry. IT was only recently due to the technical advancements in technology. The advancements in Information Technology resulted in both the quantitative and the qualitative aspects of the economy of a nation and also advancements in the tourism department consequently fueling and sustaining an impressive growth rate over the years (Franke, 2003). This brings into focus the role of IT in tourism education geared at nurturing the necessary skills in potential managers in the industry to make the industry influential and effective. The benefits of implementing Information Technology in tourism industry can only be observed through the development in the tourism industry all over the world. IT in Tourism Information Technology when applied to tourism industry, it takes the level of the tourism industry to a whole new level where tourism is seen as one of the most important industries of a nation. There are many several factors which come into play while implementing Information Technology in tourism - the information about the tourist places, the kind of places people would like to live in, the type of technology to be used and many such factors (Baggio, 2006). Each one has an important role to play in tourism. Tourism is characterized into three different components: Transport Sector Accommodation Sector Attraction Sector Transport Sector Transport is a major contributor to the development of the tourism industry. Transport helps link the origin and the destination areas through some means of transport. This means of transport could be any moving vehicle. Transport includes many entities such as holiday makers, business travelers, relatives, travelers, and other such entities. Transport facilitates the movement of these entities from one place to another. Before setting out on a journey of any kind, every traveler makes sure which Transport Company has a good safety record (Vich-I-Martorell, 2002). To this effect, airplanes coaches and even taxis are equipped with good communication equipment. An airplane requires highly sophisticated and highly advanced technical instruments to ensure passenger safety. Today's airplane has this highly advanced technical instruments and flies with the help of modern information technology equipment. A deep understanding and detailed weather information, altitude information and other such small but important information is provided by Information Technology. This information is given to the pilot. Using this information the pilot can communicate with the ground control during emergencies. With information technology in place, it is easy for airplanes to communicate to any airport during emergencies. In-flight entertainment is also a product of information technology, video games, video films are examples. In the case of buses/coaches and taxis, in many countries with developed tourism business, they are equipped with radio communication systems for various uses (Gonzalez et al., 2004). For example, the driver or the tour guide updates the Tour Company headquarters about the progress of the tour throughout the touring period. This communication ensures the safety of tourists. Fast and easy information flow is of paramount importance to build confidence in the traveling public. In recent years, the confidence built due to the use of modern IT has been demonstrated by a tremendous increase in the number of travelers worldwide. Accommodation Sector Accommodation is another important gem in the crown of tourism industry. Every traveling person will have to have an accommodation somewhere. There can be many places to stay. However, deciding and selecting poses a problem. This is because there might be many several accommodation places available. All the information regarding this issue has to be stored and managed. The implementation of Information Technology even in the accommodation sector of tourism industry is very prominent. Any individual or group wishing to travel to any part of the world now has an easy access to the accommodation service providers. A visitor can access any information about the kind of hotels at the destination, their ranges of product, the price and other relevant information without leaving his/her office or home (O'Grady & O'Hare, 2002). What one has to do is to ring up a travel agency and get the expert advice. This will help any visitor greatly as to where to stay during any kind of away from home. Here the information can be obtained aided by still or moving pictures in order to give an exact feature of an accommodation, facilities and services of ones choice. At a destination also visitors are at ease during their stay in every respect, in getting information about their business, family or other information back home. They are also at ease to relax with the videos and television entertainment programs, which nowadays are part and parcel of many accommodation units. Attraction Sector Another important sector in which Information Technology is implemented on a large scale is the Attraction Sector. In the case of attractions both manmade and natural attraction owners need to communicate or inform their customers and potential customers about their production (Pechlaner & Raich, 2002). Information Technology helps in facilitating this kind of communication between the owners and customers. Information about the kind of attraction, where they are located and how to get there is of vital importance which has to be stored and should be made publicly available in order to let them access the information about the various tourist places. The attraction owners particularly the national tourist offices discharge their duty of promoting their country's tourist attractions using the information technology products. Information through promotional videos, Internet web Sites, television advertisements and travel documentaries are the main information dissemination tools. Role of IT Tourism has a unique characteristic which is the need of the role played by the travel-intermediaries also called the travel agencies. These travel agencies are travel agents, tour operators, conference organizers booking agents etc. They are so important again because of the nature of the tourism product, perishability and intangibility. This means service products including tourism, cannot be stored for a litter sale, and cannot be inspected for their quality before purchase respectively. This entails a very big effort for marketing and distribution of these products. Tourism product supply is fragmented both geographically and as product component, coupled with their relatively low capital volume, individual components cannot afford to market and distribute their product for the dispersed potential and actual customers on their own (Egziabher, 2002). For instance, let us take an airline company as an example. An airline company, which flies many destinations, can have a representative but cannot have so many offices or product distribution channels in all routes it serves. An airline company which might have few offices will want to distribute their market. However, one can also buy the airline ticket from many other travel agencies in and around that particular city. One can imagine if the airline can run these many say sixty offices on its own which are usually with high fixed costs (Skadberg et al., 2005). This makes the travel agents indispensable partners both in efficiently distributing and marketing the product and substantially reducing the cost of operation for the airline. Travel agents are an integral entity of the tourism industry. The travel agents work on a commission basis and this reduces the cost of operation. To do this, computers and computer reservation systems are being implemented and used by the travel agents. The information regarding the travel plans has to be made accessible to the public. No other technology can better in this aspect than the Internet which is the latest and by far the best product of Information Technology. This interactive information-supplying medium is user friendly and gives enormous information of all kind related to travel. Apart from supplying information on world leading and emerging tourist destination of all kind, it is now possible to book and buy holidays through Internet (Gretzel & Fesenmaier, 2004). The Internet has all the information on all Airlines, Hotels and Car hire companies, which are in its database. Microsoft's Internet site called Expedia is one of the best examples of the new generation of travel agencies. Distribution of travel and tourism products using the Internet has a substantial cost reduction advantage for providers of tourism services. The cost incurred by suppliers in receiving a customer booking is the one, which is costly. So, Internet gives a practical aid both in supplying information and receiving bookings or selling tourism products on the principal's behalf (Anotoniou et al., 2005). Products of tourism can be marketed on the Internet too which is done with the help of the web-page of the company's Internet site. Once the company gets access to the Internet, it gets various opportunities. Of the many opportunities, Electronic-mail (e-mail) is a very important one. As a tourism product supplier, especially with business travel as a selected target market, it makes possible to communicate the person through his/her e-mail address wherever the client is. Unlike telephone communication, there is no need for the presence of the receiver of the message during message transmission. For example, if a person books an airline ticket through the web-page of the company, a copy of the ticket is sent directly to the customer's e-mail address. E-mail communication medium is very cheap yet efficient and effective. On the other hand, marketing on the Internet has an advantage of being used by all company's of all size as long as they can establish their Web Site on the Internet. Data input and discussion to confirm the viability of a product are the two integral parts in developing any product. Especially in the recent days, it is very much possible to exchange data and hold discussions between producers and researchers or producers and marketers in any part of the world without leaving his or her office which is done by the use of the information technology called video conferencing (Bergamaschi, 2005). The technology works using PCs so as to enable people to meet one another. Television screens linked by high-speed telecommunication lines are used to hold discussion and assess the impact of conversation on participants. With this technology, live transfer of data and discussions are possible. Coupled with non-verbal communication where people look at each other's reaction, video conferencing creates virtual togetherness. It gives an opportunity to discuss new development plan, a research problem or a research finding. This medium of communication has substantial cost reduction both in time and cost of travel, as participants need not travel to meet each other face to face. Actually this is a technology which is not in widespread use, but in a dynamic growth. Facilitation is one important aspect of enhancing tourism business. Facilitation includes, issuing of visa, customs clearing and immigration check in ports (Berger et al., 2003). Lack of appropriate management in giving fast and efficient service to tourists in an area will deter the tourist flow of that area substantially. Based on these networks the electronic visa, where nothing will be put on the applicant's passport will be processed for the traveler by an authorized travel agent. The travel agent feeds its computer with all details of the traveler and transmits to the country of origin where the details appear on the Immigration Department computer of that particular country. At arrival the visitor will be checked in the immigration computer at the airport by simply entering his pass port number. This system has proved to be efficient and time saving. Such a system implemented in Australia has generated an immense tourist inflow from year to year to Australia. Conclusion Tourism in today's world is a very big economic and social activity, generating a large amount of income, employment and foreign currency and investment opportunities. Though, currently, the developed nations are getting the lion's share of the benefit of tourism, there is a promising future for the developing nations also. The paramount use of IT in tourism business activity by itself does not mean anything, unless it advances the idea of human development (Edwards, 2006). It should contribute to the over all development of a country. The contribution of tourism towards socio-economic development and environmental conservation is immense. Apart from satisfying the recreational, educational and other needs of tourists, tourism could be used as a community development vehicle aimed at local people at the destination area. At macro level tourism gives an alternative or additional foreign currency source which is very much scarce in developing countries. However, not the earning of income from tourism but its judicial distribution among the stakeholders is an issue where in many cases the income remains in the pockets of handful multinational tourism business companies and national tour operators (Sahadev & Islam, 2005). This should be avoided, and only then, that tourism serves as a development vehicle to socio-economic and environmental development. The business developed due to the great contribution of IT should address this problem. If this idea is included as a tourism development objective in any country's economic agenda, the development cannot be achieved without keeping pace with the development of Information Technology. 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