eTourism & New Media in Tourism Communication

NEW MEDIA IN TOURISM

COMMUNICATION & ETOURISM

Dr. Alessandro Inversini

School of Tourism, Bournemouth University

[email protected]

beanbol.com


Functions: Project Manager, Program Assistant, PhD student, Lecturer.

2010: Executive Director webatelier.net

Webatelier.net management 10+ people / 5+ projects.

Event Organizer (ex. ENTER2010 – responsible for implementation).

Function: Managing Director (Jan. 2011)

New Media in Tourism - Regional Competence Center

6+ people, 6 public stakeholders + commercial clients

Blogger & Social Media Specialist

Good Results BUT need to move forward

September 2012

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/etourismlab/

http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/etourismlab/


Tourism and the Technological (r)evolution

Tourism

Stock and Manage

Info.

Information Intense

Day to Day Operations

Sheld

on, 1997; P

oon, 1993; G

retz

el et al., 2000

“[…] information is the lifeblood of tourism and so technology is fundamental for

the ability of the industry to operate.” Cooper, Fletcher, Gilbert, Fyall and Wanhill (2008:628)

ICTs ICTs


eTourism (I)

(Buhalis, 2003)


eTourism (II)

The digital revolution introduced by the internet, intranets and extranets provides unprecedented and unforeseen opportunities for productivity improvements, interactive management and dynamic marketing (Buhalis 2003).

As a result, organisations and governments are now, for example, able to:

• accelerate knowledge and information distribution;

• apply knowledge management at the widest possible coverage;

• increase their efficiency and productivity;

• improve and shorten the decision making process;

• enhance their communication and co-ordination efficiency;

• reduce their transportation, postage and communication costs; and

• support their interactivity with all stakeholders.


eTourism (III)

• eMarketing or eCommerce?

• Destination Managers are understanding that if well

managed technologis can bring a tremendous added

value to their business.

(Inversini et al., 2009)

• The «internet revolution» brings:

• New way of marketing and selling the destination

• New business model

• …


Example I

http://estonianfreepress.com


http://www.stregissingapore.com


HGRM


Management & Experience

Technology is crucial for the management of tourism

releted information.

Tourism is an experience which involves travelers. Modern

travelers are exploiting technologies in all the different

stages of the tourism goods consumption.

Modern traveler is sophisticated and in constant need of

information. (Buhalis and Law, 2008)

(Buhalis, 2003)

BUT

(Gretzel et al., 2006)


When technologies get involved?

Gretzel et al., 2006



When technologies get involved?



Website Communication Model

Let’s take a «services oriented» vision…


WCM (II)

Things

People


Then what is a website?

• “a cluster of pages” which is composed of “a unique node on the web” (O’Neill, 1998)

• “hobby for Information System people” (Van der Geest, 2001)

“a set of contents and services (pillar1), created by a group of

people (pillar 3) and made available to a given group of end users

(pillar 4) thanks to a collection of technical instruments (pillar 2),

and it is situated within a given relevant market (5 element)”.

(Cantoni and Tardini, 2006)


What’s the goal of a website?

• This is due to the fact that once a company enters the online information market as a player (i.e. creating an online presence/website), it could have three main core objectives: (Cantoni and Di Blas, 2002)

• To be there: most companies today have a website, and not being listed by the search engines could mean forfeiting potential clients only because the company address or telephone numbers is not in the internet.

• To operate: companies can choose to create online services to somehow operate in a B2B or B2C form in order to sell their product or to market it with prospective clients.

• To integrate: companies can exploit the internet both operating and integrating. In this case, to integrate means allowing the website to support some business process of the companies. One example of integration could be an extranet for travelling workers.

The Web as Competitive Environment


Is the web a competitive environemnt?


What is the shape of the web?

• Is it possible to represent the tourism online network of the

island? Is it possible to study the topology of the online

network (n= 468 elements)?

• The network is a virtual space where the operators can meet,

exchange information and experiences, develop common

projects and build partnerships with the objective of

reducing risk, distribution efforts, and financial costs.

• Moreover, promoting a common project through interlinked

websites provides increased visibility because a search

engines recognizes and values the importance of the

interlinking among websites

(Brin & Page, 1998)

(Baggio et al., 2007)


Elb

a N

etw

ork

Analy

sis

(I)

(B

aggio

et al., 2007)


Elba Network Analysis (II)

• Low Connectivity

• Low Modularity

• Poor degree of technological

collaboration

Low propensity to reference the external world could find a

foundation on the strong independent way to conduct the

family run enterprises and on the high rate of loyalty guests

which produce a good word-of mouth promotion. (Baggio et al., 2007)

Tourism Online Domain


Tourism Online Domain

Xiang et al., 2008


Search Engine – Example (I)


TOD (I)

• 30 destination is US

• 10 most popualr

• 10 national fame

• 10 regional fame

• 65,961,000 pages

• 969 (mean) Real indexed pages

• Visibility ratio 0.032

Xiang et al., 2008


TOD (II)

Few unique results (same domain); most of the duplicates are: (I) portals and

information aggregators such as chicagotraveler.com, citysearch.com, Yahoo!

Travel, and Chicago Tribune Online; (II) destination marketing organizations’

websites such as choosechicago.com; and,(III) government websites such as

cityofchicago.org.

Xiang et al., 2008


TOD (III)

• The so-called “thin” interface effect in that search engines

are facing challenges in representing a complex domain

like tourism.

• Online tourism is, comprised of heterogeneous business

and non-business facets that potentially contribute to the

consumption of travel.

• Although search engines have become dominant in the

online search market, they may not be capable of

providing access to a culturally rich domain like tourism.

Xiang et al., 2008


Are Websites suited for communication

purposes “during” the tourism experience?

mTourism


mTourims

Desktop navigation and destination websites can serve the

pre-consumption and post-consumption phase, but the

consumption phase itself is in need of new tools and

applications to serve user needs effectively.

(Inversini and Violi, Forthcoming)

• A relatively new trend is Mobile Tourism where tourism

information is disseminated through mobile applications

(mTourism – Kenteris et al., 2010)


Mobile diffusion


Why mobile?


Why mobile?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fZk0HaIs4s

eTourism Trends


What’s next?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoFtyJj9Q7g


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFRyOt_BqfU

eTourism & New Media in Tourism Communication

Education

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