This document discusses new media in tourism and eTourism. It provides an overview of Dr. Alessandro Inversini's work managing regional competence centers focused on new media and tourism. It also summarizes key concepts in eTourism including how technologies are used throughout the different stages of travel planning and experiences. Emerging trends like mobile tourism and the use of technologies during travel consumption are also briefly covered.
1. NEW MEDIA IN TOURISM
COMMUNICATION & ETOURISM
Dr. Alessandro Inversini
School of Tourism, Bournemouth University
ainversini@bournemouth.ac.uk
beanbol.com
2. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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/
3. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
Tourism and the Technological (r)evolution
Day to Day
Sheldon, 1997; Poon, 1993; Gretzel et al., 2000
Operations
Information
Intense
Stock and
Manage
Info.
ICTs Tourism ICTs
“[…] 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)
5. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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.
6. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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
• …
10. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
Management & Experience
Technology is crucial for the management of tourism
releted information.
(Buhalis, 2003)
BUT
Tourism is an experience which involves travelers. Modern
travelers are exploiting technologies in all the different
stages of the tourism goods consumption.
(Gretzel et al., 2006)
Modern traveler is sophisticated and in constant need of
information. (Buhalis and Law, 2008)
15. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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)
16. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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.
19. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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)?
(Baggio et al., 2007)
• 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)
21. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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)
25. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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
26. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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
27. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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
28. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
Are Websites suited for communication
purposes “during” the tourism experience?
30. Dr. Alessandro Inversini
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)
