Analysis of Impact of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on Society (Tourism)

1. Politecnico Di Milano
COMMUNICATION AND SOCIETY
2006-2007
Analysis of Impact of Information Communication Technology (ICT) on
Society (Tourism)
Instructor: Prof. Nicoleitta Di Blas
Submission Date: 31/5/2007
Submitted By
ID: 707241
Ferdous Mohammad Jannatul
Master of Science in Computer Engineering

2. Table of Contents
Executive summery 3
1. Introduction 4
2. Analysis of Media Law 5
2.1 Enhance 5
2.2 Obsolesce 6
2.3 Retrieve 7
2.4 Reverse 8
3. Conclusion 8
Reported by Mohammad Jannatul Ferdous -2-

3. Executive Summery
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays an important role in the rapid
development of Tourism sector on society. ICT has vast experience in the field of Tourism
Planning including Eco-Tourism, Cultural and Heritage Tourism, Adventure Tourism besides
Tourism Infrastructure Development. ICT has also carried out several tourism potential studies,
involving improvement in tourism related infrastructure, economic growth through increased
employment opportunities for local population, development of human resources, poverty
eradication and institutional strengthening of the regional tourism boards.
The impact of ICT on tourism has been analyzed by four “Laws of Media” (Enhance, Obsolesce,
Retrieve and Reverse) of the Marshall McLuhan. The following matrix is showing the abstract
view of media laws in tourism.
Enhance Reverse
(Searching, dynamic news, tourism (need internet connection, technology,
forum, 3D view, career, comparability) virtual tour, losing customer)
Tourism
Retrieve Obsolesce
(Tourism spot, history, ex-tourist and (travel guide book, cash payment,
disable tourist, busy people) paper-based ticket, classical check-In)
Figure 1: Matrix of laws of media
In case of Enhance, ICT gives the advance searching opportunity, comparability of travel agents,
changing tour events, opportunity to discuss on the tourism forums or blogs, 3D view of tourist
place for the tourist in the web. It also enhanced the publishing of dynamic traveling news,
ecological tourism for the traveler and advance career for the ICT student.
In case of Obsolesce, it becomes obsolete the guide book, travel magazine for news, cash payment
for booking flight & hotel, classical paper-based ticket for travel, classical check-In in the airport,
paper document for the boarding pass, traditional static web sites. It also obsoletes the non-internet
users who are unable to access the internet. Classical baggage tag might be replaced by RFID in
future.
In case of Retrieve, it becomes retrieve the tourism spots which was become obsolete, tourism
history by digital archive, the ex-tourist (60+ years old) and disable tourist who were active before.
It also retrieves time and money for the tourists and more busy people are becoming tourist now
for recreation.
In case of Reverse, tourist must need to know internet technology, need internet connection. In few
cases, people avoid actual tour by visiting virtual tour. The companies are loosing customer in the
small and small-medium business due to lack of adopting ICT. Another problem is that if the user
do not have printed map or guide book while travelling then it is not possible for them to track the
actual position without using GPS technology.
Reported by Mohammad Jannatul Ferdous -3-

4. 1. Introduction
Tourism is defined as travel that people go out from their regular environment for the certain
period of time for pleasure, business, or other purpose. The Austrian economist defined one of the
earliest definitions in 1910 which was “bob total of operators, mainly of an economic nature,
which directly relate to the entry, stay and movement of foreigners inside and outside a certain
country, city or a region”. The World Tourism Organization define tourists as people who quot;travel
to and stay in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for
leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from
within the place visitedquot;. Although many of us have been “tourist” at some point in our lives, so
defining what tourism actually is can be difficult.
Tourism is a vast sector in the society and it is the world's largest export service and is of strategic
importance for many developing countries even for developed countries, providing opportunities
for entrepreneurship and sustainable economic diversification. It is also important for society due
to the income generated by the consumption of goods and services by tourists, the taxes levied on
businesses in the tourism industry, and the opportunity for employment in the service industries
associated with tourism. These service industries include transportation services such as cruise
ships and taxis, accommodation such as hotels, restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues, and
other hospitality services such as spas and resorts. ICT is making revolution in this (tourism)
sector, changing the nature of the relationship between visitors, suppliers and partners while
creating new economic opportunities in the process. Tourism is essential for the industry of
providing tours and services to tourist. It is broken in the following six industry groups.
Accommodation: It provides accommodation for the tourist while they travel such as
hotel, motel, RV parks, campground, bed, and breakfasts.
Transportation: It includes all forms of transportation on roads, rail, in the air or water to
reach the tourist spots.
Entertainment: It includes everything from golf to ice skiing, horseback riding to
whitewater rafting, bird watching to salmon fishing. Adventure tourism draws customers and
workers alike who seek an experience off the beaten track.
Dining Service: It encompasses all establishments supplying food and beverages for
consumption, from fine dining specialties, ethnic restaurants and institutional food outlets to
catering firms, pubs and lounges.
Attraction: It generally includes historic sites, heritage homes, museums, halls of fame,
art galleries, botanical gardens, aquariums, zoos, water parks, amusement parks, casinos and
cultural attractions.
Travel Guide: It generally provide all type guide services during travel such as language
translating, giving spot information to tourist, shopping, and others helping which is not covered
by other services.
Reported by Mohammad Jannatul Ferdous -4-

5. ...
Accomodation
...
ICT
...
Transportation
Culture
Society Entertainment
Tourism
Education
Dining Service
Health
Attraction
Tourism
Society Travel Guide
Figure 2: Relation between ICT, Tourism & Society
ICT and Tourism made a complete networking among tourist, tour operators, national tourism
boards, hotel associations, hotels, airline companies, telecommunication companies, transport and
insurance companies, financial institutions and other service providers.
2. Analysis of Media Law
The Laws of Media are four questions that help us understand the effect of any artifact on our
society. The tourism sector of society has been analyzed according to four media laws Enhance,
Obsolesce, Retrieve and Reverse.
2.1 Enhance
It will describe the enhancement and newly improved by introducing this new technology and how
this artifact enhances society or our life is usually. Many times it is the reason the inventor
invented, the scientist discovered, the thinker concluded. For example: email enhanced our
communication by asynchronized personal conversations
ICT gives the advance searching opportunity for the tourist in the web. They can search
the most traveling location, time and path from the web by putting some parameter like
‘Start Date’ and ‘End Date’ for the search range. There are also others parameter such as
search by place, location. This kind of searching capability was not possible before ICT.
ICT enhanced the publishing of dynamic traveling news. Traveling news update daily
(most of the time) which was not possible in the paper guide before introducing ICT.
Travel agent companies publish and update their news just after gathering the latest news
of any spot of their area. Tourist are updating regularly before visiting the place which was
imagine before ICT.
ICT gives us the comparability of travel agent easily. In the past, People went to Tourism
fair for comparing agent by analyzing facility, cost before ICT. Because there was no way
to justify them easily. Now, it takes only few minutes to compare among several travel
agent due to ICT. People search by Google or others search engine and then go to the
chosen sites and just compare.
ICT Enhanced the Ecological tourism usually shortened to ecotourism. People get the
best natural beauty from the ecotourism site, portal, blog etc. They also get the
environmental overview by seeing the latest information (textual, audio, video,
animation). This sector is improving exponentially due to introducing ICT.
Reported by Mohammad Jannatul Ferdous -5-

6. Traveler gets the maximum priority by changing event anytime. Most of the tourism
company give the facility for the customer to change their event just before occurring the
event such as removing guide, update dining, changing reservation etc.
ICT enhanced the career for the ICT students. There are lot of new jobs have been
introduced in the tourism sector. It encourages the training of ICT students to become
involved in tourism-oriented career such us web designer, developer… etc. for tourism
portal.
Google Earth enhanced one step more in tourism by giving 3D view (buildings, streets,
lakes etc) of any location of the world. Traveler has the opportunity to get the complete 3D
image of any tourist location in real time by using Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/).
People can discuss on the tourism forum for travel. There are lots of tourism forum (i.e.
http://www.topix.net/forum/business/travel-tourism) are running in the web. People can
discuss, ask question, post travel news, make comments and read daily travel news from
forum.
2.2 Obsolesce
It means that in the past time something was existed but now becomes obsolete due to the arrival
of new artifact. For example: Automobile obsoletes the horse and buggy for transport.
Online travel news, guide obsolesce the paper guide book, travel magazine. Since people
get all news regarding travel place, cost, time, area, discount etc from the web travel guide
almost free of cost, they do not need to buy travel guide from the journal shop. So the
travel guide books and magazines company are not printing more like previous. That’s
why it is becomes obsolete.
Online tourism (Web-based Tour Management System) become obsolete the non-internet
user traveler. A large amount of users are outside of the internet technology. They are
unable to gather the information and booking flight etc. So it will be the bad impact for the
tourism sector.
Online payment transaction becomes obsolete the cash payment for booking flight, guide,
Accommodation etc. People book everything before traveling the place. So they have to
pay before for getting all type of service like guide service, dining, accommodation, car
booking, travel flight booking etc. They always prefer to pay in online by credit card
(VISA, Master Card, VISA Electron etc) due to save their time though they have also
option to pay by check or cash.
E-Ticketing becomes obsolete the classical paper-based ticket. The avoidance of classical
paper-based tickets is one of the main reasons of saving time and low-cost in respect of
business. Tourist can buy their tickets and get the e-ticket for print including invoice
number. The adoption of e-ticking is increasing among the users.
Airport customer self-service become obsolete the classical check-in. Another measure
for cost reduction and the acceleration of passenger flows at airports is to introduce
customer self-service check-in solutions. This may be done on the spot by self-service
kiosks or in the form of web based check-ins, which may even allow users to check-in
from home or their office.
Reported by Mohammad Jannatul Ferdous -6-

7. Bar-coded boarding pass makes a paper document becomes obsolete. It offers a link with
e-ticket and self-service check in. Most recently, it is not only possible to print boarding
passes at the passenger’s home, but also to place bar codes on the passenger’s cell phone.
RFID for luggage handling might replace classical baggage tags in the near future. It
might simplify airline baggage management considerably, improve customer service in
terms of reductions in mishandled baggage and provide new security requirements.
Traditional static web sites are become obsolesce. Companies are losing their customer
due to providing the old information in the web. Digital native users are more advance in
the current world. They want to get everything from the web. So the static sites are now
useless for the users.
2.3 Retrieve
This means that the artifact retrieve something that had been previously obsolesced. It could be
very old but perhaps with a new appreciation. Here we look for metamorphosis of new artifact. For
example: CD-ROM retrieves the archive as a relevant source of information.
ICT becomes retrieve the tourism spot which was become obsolete. Some of tourism spot
was lost due to lack of publishing in the paper book or getting non-popularity for any
reason but the place was consider as tourist place before. It was more costly to publishing
in a paper or guide book or in the magazine monthly for the less-popular place. ICT makes
it easier by publishing information in the web daily. Company can change the spot
information (advertising) randomly to attract more tour spot even new spot among the
tourists.
ICT retrieves the archiving of tourism history in the digital world. The companies were
unable to store all historical travel information by paper-based documenting before ICT.
Because if they store all information in the paper per day (for example keeping 1000 pages
per day) and after one year it will be 100 * 365 = 36,50,000 pages which is costly to print
or writing whatever. That’s why, they were skipping each and every information for
keeping history in paper before ICT. Now they can archive all information in the database
easily with a negligible cost.
Online video, Virtual tour retrieves the ex-tourist and disable tourist who were active
before. The old tourist or disable person could not visit the tourism place physically due to
the physical constrains. ICT engages them again in the tourism world by providing online
video, virtual tour, and latest pictures, updated daily news etc. They were able to
accessing the information from news paper or magazine before ICT nothing was more
than that. Now they also can share (in web blogs, groups, discussion board) their
experiences and differences with the current tourists as a part of a member of the tourism
world.
ICT retrieves time and money for the tourist. The tourist was spent more time and money
to process document (booking ticket & hotel, giving transport tax etc) before ICT. Now
they can save their time and money by doing everything from the web. They can spend
their saving time and money to visit more tourism place.
More busy people are traveling now. People were forgetting to travel due to busyness of
our life who was traveled before. They were aware to visit to any place because of
preparation of traveling before introduce ICT in tourism. In the current technology, they
can start their preparation before traveling one day. So they are traveling again for their
recreation.
Reported by Mohammad Jannatul Ferdous -7-

8. 2.4 Reverse
It describes about the problem which occurred due to introduce this new artifact. What is the result
when new artifact gets pushed to an extreme? While the most common extreme is too
much (of a good thing), the other extreme is too little. For example: Automobile pushed to
extreme is traffic jams.
User need to know about the internet technology. Non-internet user unable to access
internet. Digital immigrant people (that of the pre-digital age) avoid the technology. They
do not want to use internet and accessing sites. They do not like to buy e-ticket and
payment by credit card because they do not understand the technology. They always feel
afraid to do this kind of online transactions.
User needs Computer, Printer, and internet connection to gather the information. Many
people do not have the above hardware and technology in their home or office. They are
still depend on the paper, travel guide etc. specially in many developing countries. Those
tourists become through out from the tourism sector.
Some times people only visit the virtual tour instead of actual tour. User can get the
virtual tour of museum from website in case of Cultural and Heritage Tourism. For
example: louver museum (http://www.louvre.fr). Because tourist get the more idea and
information from the virtual tour, video, picture what they need.
Medium-small and small travel agent companies are losing customer. Most of the small
companies are unable to integrate with ICT while tourists are looking for modern facility
towards ICT. So they are unable to make profit with respect to big ICT oriented
companies.
Tourists have to use GPS (Global Positioning System) technology as indicator to track the
actual tourist place which is not available for the all type of tourists. Because if they do not
use the printed map or travel guide book then they have to use digital indicator or a
physical guide to track the tourist place while traveling. But if they use printed guide book
and map then they can only use analog indicator to track the location by getting direction
(north, south … etc.) . For example: finding como lake (Lago di COMO ) from como
borgi.
3. Conclusion
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) makes tourist life easier by providing many
facilities in tourism. Tourism is one of the vast domains on our society for country development,
developing economic growth etc. So the impact of tourism also effect on our society. In the above
discussion, we have observed how ICT is developing our tourism sector by analysis four media
laws of Marshall McLuhan. Thus, ICT is changing our life positively day by day on our society.
Reported by Mohammad Jannatul Ferdous -8-