the open tourism consortium:: laying the foundations for the future of tourism

European Management Journal Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 315–326, 2004 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Pergamon

Printed in Great Britain0263-2373 $30.00doi:10.1016/j.emj.2004.04.014

The Open TourismConsortium:Laying The Foundationsfor the Future of TourismRICHARD WATSON, University of GeorgiaSIGMUND AKSELSEN, Telenor, NorwayEMMANUEL MONOD, University of NantesLEYLAND PITT, Erasmus University

The current highly fragmented multitude of infor-mation systems supporting tourism greatlyincreases the tourist’s search costs, and while tour-ing there is almost no information systems support.A more cohesive and integrated approach shouldenhance the tourist’s experience in the three phasesof tourism: planning, touring, and reminiscing. Theemergence of u-commerce, the ultimate form ofcommerce, is the backdrop to identifying a seriesof information products that will improve thesearching, management, delivery, and sharing oftourism data. It is proposed that the six productsidentified (TourDM, TourML, TourStyle,TourCMS, TourImplement, and TourCommunity)be developed using the open source model and thecooperative efforts of a large number of geographi-cally dispersed students. The Open Tourism Con-sortium has been created to support this collabor-ative endeavor. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Open tourism consortium, Tourism,Tourist information systems, Tourism data

Introduction

Tourism is an important global industry with inter-national tourism receipts reaching $462 billion in2001 and accounting for about 8 per cent of total glo-bal exports for goods and services, making it the larg-est export category1. For some countries (see Table

European Management Journal Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 315–326, June 2004 315

1), tourism is an important employer and majorsource of foreign currency. In 2003, the US tourismand travel economy is expected to represent nearly11 per cent of GDP and over 16 million jobs. ForFrance, the world’s major tourist destination, the cor-responding figures are 12.3 per cent of GDP and 3.4millions jobs2. Sustainable tourism is the hope ofmany developing countries as they attempt to dealwith the simultaneous problems and opportunities ofeconomic growth, high unemployment, and environ-mental protection. For the European Union, theobjectives of social cohesion and sustainable growth(European Union, 2000) are partially achievable byincreased tourism, which as well as increasinggrowth, typically boosts tolerance of other customsand cultures.

Because tourism is an information intensive business,there are opportunities to apply information tech-nology to support tourism and tourists. Traditionally,the industry has focused on applying technology tosupport the suppliers of services to tourists (e.g. res-ervation systems, property management systems).With the advent of the Internet, some of these sys-tems were extended to customers. Thus, many tour-ists now book their own travel and accommodation.

Nevertheless, there are three fundamental problemswith current tourism information systems. First, thereis an overwhelming melange of tourist informationthrough which tourists have to sift and winnow.They confront too many Web sites and can easilyspend too much time searching for useful infor-

TOURISM INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Table 1 The Top Five Tourism Destinations (January 2003)

Nation Arrivals 2002 Market share (%) Receipts 2001 Market share (%) Receipts per arrival(millions) ( billions) ( )

France 75.2 10.7 33.5 4.7 445Spain 50.1 7.2 36.7 5.1 733United States 45.5 6.4 80.7 11.3 1774Italy 39.1 5.6 29 4.1 742China 33.2 5.1 19.9 2.8 599

Source: World Tourism Organization

mation. Second, there is little use of information tech-nology to support tourists when they are touring.Third, experiences gained during a trip are not easilyshared and reminiscing is rarely supported. In thisarticle, we apply the concepts of open standards(Economist, 2003) and u-commerce (Watson, 2000;Watson et al., 2002) to foretell how, within a fewyears, information technology can effectively supporttourists in all phases of their travel. We outline thearchitecture of a meta-information system, U-tour,built on data management and network technologies.The name, U-tour, is an amalgam of the ideas of u-commerce (Watson et al., 2002) and the notion thatunder the projected system tourists will in manyrespects be their own travel agents and tour guides.

The Phases of Tourism

There are three phases in which tourists could benefitfrom information systems: planning, touring, andreminiscing. The information systems opportunitydiffers by phase ( see Table 2), as we explain in thefollowing discussion.

In the planning phase, prior to the trip, the touristcollects information about destinations. In recentyears, the Web has significantly augmented the tra-ditional sources of tourist guides and travel services.Now, tourists suffer from a surfeit of planning infor-mation. For instance, a Google search on the key-words ‘Rome tourism’ gives nearly 600,000 hits. Theglut of information is overwhelming and trying tofind relevant information is time-consuming andfrustrating. There is a major opportunity to improvedata search and integration to facilitate faster accessto useful information.

Tourists require an overarching meta-organizing

Table 2 Tourism Phases and Information SystemsOpportunities

Phase Opportunity

Planning Data managementTouring Data deliveryReminiscing Data sharing

European Management Journal Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 315–326, June 2004316

information system that provides them with a well-organized starting point for their search. A datawarehouse (Inmon, 1996) is a corporate solution forinformation disorganization. A standard data modelcould have a similar effect for the tourism industry.This entry point for a tourist’s information searchwill need a distinguishing global service mark andsupporting publicity campaign to make touristsaware of its presence. As nearly all States, provinces,and governments operate tourism agencies of someform, these institutions are probably the potentialhosts of a standard data model. However, tour oper-ators and travel firms are not ruled out as hosts,because the open nature of TourDM means thatadoption is in no way restricted.

The emergence of the Web browser as a global infor-mation systems interface clearly illustrates the valueof standards. In the case of tourism, a standard datamodel and supporting queries will significantlyreduce the learning time and dissatisfaction of tour-ists during trip planning. They will know what infor-mation they can expect to find and how to go aboutfinding it irrespective of whether they are planninga visit to Rome or Casablanca. They will learn, forexample, that they can find out when museums areopen and how much they charge and what veg-etarian restaurants are within walking distance of aspecific hotel.

Touring, the second phase of tourism, defines theperiod when a person is visiting sites, wanderingaround museums, attending a festival, and so forth.During this phase, the tourist needs location-basedinformation services3 to inform them about the tour-ist attractions within their environs. They might, forexample, seek information about objects within theirimmediate vicinity (e.g. What is the history of thememorial on the corner?) or find out what is available(e.g. What is the nearest open museum?). Touristsmight also seek information about services in areasthey are approaching (e.g. What hotels in the nexttown have vacancies, what their relative locationsare, and what their rates are?). These are not newinformation needs, but typical of the queries forwhich tourists have sought answers for many years.What is new is the capacity to deliver answers tosuch questions, and many more, to tourists as they

Some mobile phones are

already sold with GBS

capability and have the

potential of becoming

personalized tour guides


tour. Thus, the central information systems concernis the delivery of relevant, context-sensitive, tailoredinformation to tourists wherever they are, or perhapsmore specifically, exactly where they are and exactlywhat they are doing.

Mobile phones are increasingly gaining features thatmake them portable information appliances. Recentmobile phones, such as the Sony Ericsson P800, arefar more than mere communication devices. Theyinclude features such as a camera with picture edit-ing capabilities, personal information manager(calendar, contacts, tasks, notepad, and voice memo),Internet access, Bluetooth con-nectivity, music player, andgame machine. Because theycome with an operating system,these phones have all thepower of a computer. Further-more, these informationappliances have the capabilityto determine their locationusing techniques such as uplinktime difference of arrival (U-TDOA) (Zhao, 2002), which has an accuracy of some-where between 20 and 50 m. Location-based serviceshave been operational for some time (e.g. the Austr-ian mobile network operator’s ONE service calledONE COMPASS).

The technology is in place to deliver information tothe mobile tourist, and now we need the imaginationand market research to determine profitable services.Importantly, we believe that the current mobilephone models should not be perceived as a micro,mobile Internet browser, even those with larger dis-plays.

The power of the mobile phone is to deliver voice,which may be particularly important for tourists whoare unlikely to patronize a service that requires themto wander around peering at a small screen whentheir goal is to capture the ethos of a new environ-ment. Obviously, the screen mechanism of the deviceand its ability to capture and store text is stillimportant — the device can remember telephonenumbers, names and street addresses, and of course‘non-map’ directions (‘take the rear exit of the Colos-seum station, turn right into Via dei Fori Imperiali,and proceed to Trajan’s column’). Some mobilephones are already sold with GPS capability andhave the potential of becoming personalized tourguides, responding to a request for information abouta particular object in the language and level of detailthe tourist wants.

At various stages after a trip, reminiscing ensues. Onreturning from a trip, travelers recall the highlightsand often share these with relatives and friends. Also,they might want to comment on places they have vis-ited. Hence, there is a need to support creation of apersonal electronic trip album so that the traveler can


relive and share memories, and potentially increasetourism through this electronic variation of word ofmouth. Also, by adapting the book review model ofAmazon and following feedback sites such as epi-nions4, tourists should have a convenient method ofsharing their thoughts with those planning a trip.One of the strengths of both the printed guides andof the Internet version of the Lonely Planet series5 isthat the content is added by ordinary tourists wholike to contribute, thus providing credible contentthat can be used by others. Both reminiscing featuresand opinions must be an integral element of TourDMto provide ease of use and information value. Infor-

mation systems can supportreminiscing by providing toolsfor various forms of infor-mation sharing.

Current technology and sol-utions support the three phasespreviously described, but it isleft to the tourist to integrate themany sources of information and

available systems. There is a need to take support fortourism beyond the current state where the Web is adaunting mound of information that imposes heavysearching costs (Figure 1). The old model forces touriststo integrate information, when this is a task for whichinformation technology is highly suited.

We need a single integrated platform to solve thedata management, delivery, and sharing deficienciesof the current hodgepodge of diverse offerings(Figure 2). Information technologies exist to integratedata from a diverse range of sources, to reducesearching costs by providing a single interface, andto support seamlessly all phases of travel. The tech-nology is here, or almost here, and in the remainderof this article we describe a solution for enhancingall phases of the tourist’s experience — planning,touring, and reminiscing. We start by describing theemerging electronic environment to help us envisionthe future.

U-commerce Conceptual Foundations

It is conjectured (Watson et al., 2002) that the nearfuture will see the emergence of a multi-faceted u-commerce, where the u stands for ubiquitous, univer-sal, unique, and unison. U-commerce is defined asthe use of ubiquitous networks to support personalized anduninterrupted communications and transactions betweenan organization and its various stakeholders to provide alevel of value over, above, and beyond traditional commerce(Watson et al., 2002). Building on this foundationalwork, we describe each of the key concepts and illus-trate its relevance to tourism.


Figure 1 The Old Tourism Information Model

Figure 2 The New Tourism Information Model

Ubiquitous

Networks will soon be everywhere — from the globalGPS network, to national GSM6 mobile phone sys-tems, local area WiFi, and short-range Bluetooth.Low cost microprocessors and network connectionswill be embedded in most consumer durable devices.Intelligence will be added to everyday entities toimprove their usefulness and information providingcapacity. For example, Sailing Software7 markets aBluetooth8 application that enables Sony Ericssonphone owners to control remotely applications (e.g.a slide presentation) running on a Macintosh com-puter.

The mobile phone is an early example of ubiquity.Already mobile phones are accessible to peoplebeyond the reach of today’s Internet, notably thosein the developing world, because they do not requirecomplex and costly personal computers. Mobilephones bring many of the benefits of electronic infor-mation access to a far wider population than is ablecurrently to enjoy the Internet.

Universal

Many information appliances (e.g. desktop, laptop,cell phone, or PDA) are limited in their usefulnessbecause they are not universally functional. They donot work on all networks. For example, a US cellphone is unlikely to work in Europe because of dif-ferent standards and network frequencies. In thefuture, consumers will have a universal phone thatwill enable them to stay connected wherever they


are. The laptop and PDA, or some convergence of thetwo devices, will also gain universality and alwaysbe connected to the Internet via a wireless networkor satellite, wherever the owner is.

The Internet has also become universal in anotherway because information is more portable than aphysical device. One can travel to many places thatnowadays have Internet access and still access one’s‘own’ Internet. Airline lounges and business hotelsare installing WiFi access, and many firms and insti-tutions have facilities for visitors. The need to carrya laptop for Internet access is decreasing rapidly.

Unique

Information can easily be customized to the currentcontext and particular needs of each person. Forexample, electronic tourist guides could be tailoredto the personal preferences and current location of atourist. Tourists should be able to opt to hear descrip-tions of items of interest at the preferred level ofdetail in their language.

JNavi is a service in Japan that lets travelers enter aphone number, address, or landmark and thensearches the area within a 500-m radius. This makesit possible to find the subway station nearest to agiven shop, or a particular restaurant within walkingdistance of a specific office building. Users of the ser-vice can download a full color map. At launch in May2000, JNavi was expected to handle 100,000 hits perday. By day 3, it already had 1.6 million hits. Now,


it has 2 million hits a day, and 50,000 users a dayrequest a map.

Uniqueness in its full bloom means that consumerswill receive information that is dependent based onthe person’s location, time of day, current role ormultiplicity of roles (e.g. tourist, parent, commuter,manager), and that person’s expressed or learnedpreferences (i.e. learned by the systems providing theservice). When visitors to Singapore land at ChangiAirport and turn on their mobile phone, theyimmediately receive a few SMS messages. One isfrom the Singapore Tourist Authority, providing con-tact numbers for cab companies and hotels.

Unison

When consumers have complete synchronicitybetween their phonebook, calendar, ‘to do’ list, andother such files across a range of electronic tools (i.e.,cell phone, computer, and PDA), they have unison.Thus, a change in one electronic phonebook is trans-mitted to all others with complete transparency to theowner. With unison, operational, specified files arekept synchronized and the required information isalways available irrespective of the device andlocation. Unison means the integration of variouscommunication systems so there is a single interfaceor connection point. Apple’s iSync9 synchronizes filesbetween a person’s personal computers (e.g. work,home, and laptop) and digital devices, includingmusic player, mobile phone, and PDA.

For the tourist, it could mean adding reservationdetails, hotel addresses, and event times to a desktopsystem when planning a trip. Before leaving home,the tourist would synchronize this information withthe information appliance she will take on the trip.Alitalia10 supports unison by providing details of atravel reservation in vCalendar format11 for easyloading to most electronic calendars.

U-space

U-space, the new arena of marketing and tourism,has two dimensions (Watson et al., 2002). Time –space specificity ranges from the unique (time –spacespecific or localized) to ubiquitous (time – spaceunspecific or everywhere). Awareness varies fromthe unconscious to ultra-conscious. Technology canamplify or attenuate consciousness as directed by theconsumer. First, it can extend or enhance a con-sumer’s ordinary awareness (i.e. make it ultra-conscious). Second, it can take something that onceoccupied a consumer’s conscious awareness and per-form it automatically (i.e. render it an unconsciousprocess for the consumer). U-space delineates fourtypes of commerce: the hyper-real, the post-human,


the matrix, and the node (Figure 3) and the fourforms of marketing described in Table 3.

The Hyper-real (Ultra-conscious, Unique)

When technology delivers value by extending normalconscious experience to unique contexts, we enter therealm of the ‘hyper-real’. This is the domain of theimmersion marketing, the extension of the experienceeconomy (Pine and Gilmore, 1999) to the networkage. A tourist can travel to a cultural heritage siteto gain the perspective and ethos that only physicalpresence can provide and then virtual reality canenhance the visit. In the foreseeable future, say by2010, mobile information appliances should have suf-ficient processing and memory to provide an immers-ive experience within the domain of the real setting.This will probably require the tourist to don someform of headgear or spectacles to provide the vis-ualization. The Cultural VR Lab12 at the Universityof California Los Angeles has many examples illus-trating the engaging richness of virtual reality.

The Post-human (Ultra-conscious, Ubiquitous)

In the post-human quadrant, technology extends thetourist’s normal conscious experience ubiquitously(i.e. across time and space). There is an enduringenhancement of the touring experience. Travelers aremore aware of their environment. They learn moreabout the things of personal interest, they ‘see’ moreof their surroundings because, like an expert guide,technology alerts them to salient features of thelocality. This information service is always ‘on,’ inde-pendent of a tourist’s location.

This quadrant is the sphere of transformation mar-keting. It enriches a tourist’s conscious interaction by

Figure 3 U-space (Watson et al., 2002)


Table 3 Types of Marketing

Type of marketing Description Example

Amplification Creating value by extending or enhancing Augmenting a tour of the Parthenon with virtualconscious interaction with phenomena reality

Attenuation Creating value by reducing the necessity of Using a mobile phone as an electronic wallet thatconsciously interacting with phenomena automatically does currency conversion and transfer

Contextual Processes that are time – space specific, and add Providing information on the nearest seafoodvalue through their specificity restaurant, menu pricing, and table availability

Transcension Processes that create value by transcending, or Enabling the tourist to take a photo, add a voiceenabling transcension, of the traditional constraints message, and send it to his daughter a continentof time – space away

transcending specific time-space. An omnipresent,omniscient tourist guide is always at one’s side.Touring is transformed because information paintsthe full color of any setting in the tourist’s favoriteshades and hues. The history enthusiast, for instance,is informed of all the major events and characters ofthe current site. Whereas, the architecture fan learnsabout the buildings in the immediate vicinity.

The Matrix (Unconscious, Ubiquitous)

In the matrix quadrant, technology delivers value byubiquitously removing and performing tasks outsideor behind awareness (i.e. across time and space). Net-work technologies (e.g. Internet, mobile phone, GPS,Wi-Fi, Iridium, Bluetooth, sensornets) mediate inter-action between the tourist and the environment. Asan example, the tourist might define a daily newsreport to be delivered to all her information devices.The characteristics of the news report are selected inadvance (e.g. top two international stories and newsabout her favorite football team) and delivered in anappropriate format to each active informationappliance.

Synchronous marketing is the replication, updating, andintegration of processes across time and space.Changes or additions added to any one of the tour-ist’s collection of electronic devices automaticallypropagate to all other devices. When planning, forinstance, reservations sent in electronic form to thetourist’s desktop computer are also transparentlyreplicated to her laptop and mobile phone.

The Node (Unconscious, Unique)

In node mode, technology performs tasks outside orbehind awareness in specific time-space locations.The node takes over many transactions that are oftentime-consuming and challenging for the tourist. Forexample, tourists visiting a museum will not queueto buy tickets, rather they will walk into the ticketpurchasing area, get the price displayed in the cur-rencies of their choice on their information appliance,approve the purchase with a single click, and enterthe building. In some cases, such as using a city trans-


port system, the cost of travel between two pointswill be automatically determined and deducted froma designated account. The node focuses on the cre-ation and supply of services designed to performautomatically processes on behalf of tourists. Suchservices might include an electronic wallet thathandles the purchase of low-cost items, thus freeingthe tourist from having to handle an unfamiliar cur-rency. One of the great recent successes of the Dutchbanking system has been the ‘Chip-Knip’ cash card.This is a simple smart card that can be loaded withcash at an ATM, and then used to pay for just aboutanything that requires a relatively small cash pay-ment (all McDonalds’ restaurants in The Netherlandsaccept the card). Originally the Dutch banks hadattempted to push adoption of the card in order toreduce the costs of handling small amounts of cashand change. The uptake of the card was acceleratedsignificantly when local authorities permitted its usein paying for parking. Now the card can be used fora host of small payments such as tram and train tick-ets. It will shortly be made available on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis for tourists without Dutch bankaccounts.

Nexus marketing describes features that reduce thenecessity to interact consciously in specific contexts(e.g. electronic entry fee collection). It centers on theutilization of time – space specific connections(nexuses or nodes) to perform processes on behalf ofthe tourist. Another good recent example from TheNetherlands is the Premier Iris Scan service at Schi-pol airport. Frequent travelers to and from TheNetherlands can avoid standing in lengthy passportcontrol queues by having their iris scanned (thehuman iris is as distinct as a finger print) andrecorded. They then simply stand in front of an irisscanner that verifies their identity and permits themto pass through.

Now that we understand the four quadrants of theemerging environment of u-commerce, it is pertinentto consider the key features of an information archi-tecture that can enhance the tourist’s experience ineach of tourism’s phases and for each quadrant ofu-space.


The Information Architecture

The foundations of U-tour’s architecture are a blendof the old (relational technology) and the new (XML).Relational technology (Codd, 1970), conceived morethan 30 years ago, is the dominant method for man-aging large collections of data and there are well-established techniques for relational database design.XML, a data exchange technology, is a project of theWorld Wide Web Consortium (W3C, 2003) releasedin 1998. Because it is an extensible markup language,XML supports development of industry standardsfor data exchange.

TourDM — Standard for Data Management

Creating a data model is the first step to solving anydata management problem. A data model visuallyidentifies the entities, attributes, and relationshipsthat a database should store and manage (Watson,2004). In the case of tourism, the data model needsto define tourism objects such as locations andevents, the facts that must be remembered aboutthem (e.g. the latitude and longitude of all locations),and the relationships (a city can have many hotels).

TourDM serves several purposes. First, a single,widely implemented entry point for learning abouttourist objects in a city, region, or country will be amajor convenience for tourists. They will learn whatthey can expect to find and gain proficiency insearching. This does not mean a single interface,because clearly various tourist bureaus will want tocreate a look and feel that resonates with the localscene.

Second, TourDM means that different databases canbe merged virtually to broaden search capabilities.For example, if each of the major cities in France usesTourDM, then a tourist could pose a single query(e.g. find jazz concerts in July in France) that couldbe run against each city’s database rather than thejazz fan having to run the same query multiple times.Widespread adoption of TourDM would create a glo-bal distributed tourist database, but at the same timesupport local independence for data management.

Third, standardization reduces duplication of data-base design effort and will also support some othereconomies of data management. For example, theremay be some standard reporting routines for com-parison of usage across systems.

TourML — A Standard for Data Exchange

A great deal of the data required to populate andmaintain a tourism database is already in electronicformat. What is missing is a language for describinghow to exchange data between these databases and


a TourDM database. Several industries have usedXML as the foundation for data interchange. Geogra-phy markup language (GML) (Cox et al., 2003) is apotential starting point for developing a tourismmarkup language. Borrowing from the description ofGML, we arrive at the following high-level specifi-cation.

Tourism markup language (TourML) is an XMLencoding for the transport and storage of tourisminformation, including both the spatial and non-spa-tial properties of tourist objects. TourML defines theXML Schema syntax, mechanisms, and conventionsthat:

❖ Provide an open, vendor-neutral framework forthe definition of tourism application schemasand objects;

❖ Allow profiles that support proper subsets ofTourML;

❖ Support the description of tourism applicationschemas for the full range of tourism objects andactivities;

❖ Enable the creation and maintenance of distrib-uted tourism application schemas and datasets;

❖ Support the storage and transport of applicationschemas and datasets;

❖ Increase the ability of tourism supporting organi-zations to share tourism application schemas andthe information they describe;

❖ Enhance the tourist’s experience by providing rel-evant location-based information in an appropri-ate format.

TourML will support a variety of data exchanges, asthe following examples illustrate.

Figure 4 A TourML Example

%electronic tourist guides

could be tailored to the

personal preferences and

current location of a

tourist


❖ A hotel chain generates a TourML description ofall its hotel properties for electronic delivery anduploading to TourDM compliant databases;

❖ A symphony orchestra creates a TourML filedescribing its forthcoming tour with details of cit-ies visited and local contact information and sup-plies it to the tourist bureaus in each city it willvisit;

❖ A car rental firm produces a TourML file detailingthe location of its rental agencies;

❖ A local history group prepares for its state tourismagency a TourML file describing the historical fea-tures of its area and theirlocation.

For those readers unfamiliarwith XML, Figure 4 contains ashort example of TourML codefor describing a restaurant.

Any implementation ofTourDM should also supportform-based input for those cir-cumstances where data exchanged via TourML is notefficient. Thus, a local restaurant should be able tologin and update its database details.

TourStyle — Managing Information Delivery

Rapid change in technology, particularly in the areaof information appliances where there is a conver-gence of previously discrete functionalities, meansthat it is prudent to design an information architec-ture that is device independent. Furthermore, the sys-tem should be adaptable to take advantage of outputcharacteristics of new devices.

Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) (Fitzgerald,2001) is a language for specifying the transformationand presentation of an XML file. By applying differ-ent stylesheets, a single XML file can be transformedin a variety of ways. The format and content of out-put can be altered to match a device’s characteristics.Thus, a tourist executing a query from a desktopmight view a combined text, graphics, and videoresponse. A traveler initiating the same query from amobile phone might hear a synthesized text answer.

TourCMS — Site Management

Every tourism bureau has a Web site, or tourism por-tal, so there is also an opportunity to gain some econ-omies by developing a content management system(CMS) for tourism bureau Web sites. Open sourceproducts such as Plone13 and PHP-Nuke14 are poten-tial foundations for a specialist CMS that is integratedwith TourDM, TourML, and TourStyle. CMSs haveconsiderable opportunity for customization so thereshould not be a concern that all tourist bureaus’ Websites are cookie-cutter replicas. All such sites should


provide similar functionality, but be customized tofit with local culture and tourism specialties.

TourImplement — Exploiting Social Capital

Once the previously described elements are available,a tourism or travel organization could implement atourism information system to support the threephases previously defined. To accelerate and reducethe risk of implementation, the accumulated knowl-edge of prior implementations should be harvested

and readily accessible. TourIm-plement, a knowledge portalcontaining information toguide implementation, willinclude a project plan template,guidelines, checklists, tools forestimating required resources,frequently asked questions, anda newsletter.

Knowledge cannot always bemade explicit because there is the tacit element of a‘knowing in action in a community of practice’(Orlikowski, 2002) or, to be more accurate, a socialcapital (Adler and Kwon, 2002). A normalized projectplan template, guidelines, and checklist will nevercover the particular situation in each location.Nothing replaces ‘contact persons’ who are ready torespond to specific questions. Therefore, TourImple-ment must support collaborative tools such as an on-line forum and a regular conference, where devel-opers and implementers can share knowledge andplan future development. Building this social capitalis a necessary component of both software construc-tion and system implementation.

TourCommunity — Engaging and Extending

In many communities there are citizens with special-ized local knowledge of appeal to tourists but of lim-ited commercial value. For example, the local birdwatcher’s club will have members who know the bestplaces to watch circling hawks or migrating geese.History buffs, for instance, might have developed arecord of all burials in the local cemetery. These dataare of interest to some, though not many, and a goalof OTC is to engage communities so that specializedinterests can be served. By engaging local citizens inthe production of useful information for tourists withsimilar pasttimes, the value of a tourist informationsystem is extended. Indeed, communities who excelat extending the information available might attractmore tourists because they create awareness ofopportunities (e.g. finding great-grandfather’sheadstone) that were previously elusive.

TourCommunity will need software and proceduresto ensure data quality. One approach might be toappoint local editors who will vet database entries


before they are posted. Alternatively, local communityorganizations might accept responsibility for manag-ing a portion of the database related to their interests.

TourCommunity creates a third form of openness.Open standards (TourML) and open source code(TourCMS) are joined by open participation. Pro-vided certain quality safeguards are maintained, thedatabase is open to all to add content. This does notmean a free-for-all, but similar to open sourcesoftware, community members can propose contentthat is reviewed and verified before insertion.

The Tourist Experience Model

The customer service life cycle model (Ives and Lear-month, 1984), which has been adapted to the hospi-tality sector (Piccoli et al., 2001, forthcoming), is afoundation for considering the tourist’s electronicexperience. The model (Figure 5) breaks each of thephases into the same set of subphases: attraction,navigation, requirements, and acquisition.

Attraction

Information services, just like any business, mustattract visitors (Watson et al., 1998) and convert areasonable percentage of these surfers to customersin order to be successful (Berthon et al., 1996). Differ-ent attraction strategies are appropriate for eachphase. For example, the goal of the planning stage isto attract tourists to the Web site, and tourist bureaus,as they already do, would advertise the URL in theirpromotional material. For the touring phase, touristsmust be attracted to the mobile service. Their aware-ness should be created in the planning stage andreinforced as they make the transition to touring (e.g.airline magazine adverts). Similarly, when the trip iscompleted, they should be reminded of the servicesthat support reminiscing (e.g. a follow up message

Figure 5 Tourist Experience Model


from the airline because it has details of when thetraveler returned).

Navigation

Tourists must be able to navigate quickly and accu-rately the information they require or they might dis-continue the service. Navigation is likely to be aparticular challenge for information appliances thathave a limited screen size. In which case, it mightmake sense for interface designers to make appropri-ate use of voice recognition to maximize ease-of-use.

Requirements

The requirements subphases support the tourist’sinformation needs. In planning, it means providingthe information typically found in a tour book withthe addition of links to further information (e.g. a linkfrom a hotel’s entry in the database to its Web site).While on tour, the tourist’s needs could include find-ing the nearest laundry service, Thai restaurant, andthe cost of a day pass on the transport system.

Acquisition

Once the tourist’s requirements are determined, thereshould be support for obtaining the product or ser-vice. Many acquisition services are likely to lie out-side the range of the proposed system since its primegoal is to provide meta-information. Thus, hotel res-ervations, for example, would be handled by tra-ditional reservation systems.

However, U-tour will deliver a range of information-based services. We envisage that while touring, sight-seers will be able to receive customized voice(synthesized or pre-recorded) descriptions of objectswithin their environment. During an earlier require-ments subphase (planning or touring), they wouldhave specified their requirements (e.g. Italian langu-age, female voice, brief description, historyemphasis), and during acquisition, this informationwould be delivered.

A Seamless Experience within Bounds

U-tour implicitly supports an integrated approachbecause it covers the three major phases of tourism.Its success will be determined by ensuring successfulencounters in each of the sub-phases of the entirecycle. There is, however, the ever-present problemthat, since U-tour is a meta-information system, tour-ists will attribute shortcomings in connections (e.g. alinked restaurant) to U-tour. These expectations needto be managed by teaching tourists about the limitsof U-tour and terminating — or perhaps even high-lighting — links that prove to be a source of continu-ing dissatisfaction.

%we anticipate that the

new information services,

particularly those provided

during touring, will be a

source of revenue


The Open Tourism Consortium

The open source movement has been galvanized bythe open standards of the Internet, which is not onlyan open standard (e.g. HTML and TCP/IP) but alsoan apparatus for diverse and distributed collabor-ation to create new open standards. Global communi-ties have created an operating system (Linux), a data-base management system (MySQL), a Web server(Apache), a statistical analysis package (R), a Webapplication development language (PHP), and manyproducts based on these and other open sourcesoftware. Complex commercialsystems can be built entirelywith open source software andmany governments and organi-zations are rethinking theirreliance on proprietary software.

With the model of the opensource movement in mind and athe goal of using open sourcesoftware, we decided to createan Open Tourism Consortium (OTC)15 to supportdevelopment of U-tour. All specifications (e.g. TourML)and software (e.g. TourCMS) will be created by distrib-uted, collaborative efforts, placed in the public domain,and freely downloadable.

We also plan to use students to bootstrap the devel-opment of U-tour. University of Georgia InformationSystems students completed prototype versions ofTourDM and TourML in spring 2003. For his diplomathesis, Markus Seibold, a University of Regensburgstudent, will create TourDM 1.0 and TourML 1.0 forrelease in late 2003. Meanwhile, students in graduateclasses at Georgia State University have investigatedapplications of the U-tour concept and consideredsome of the design and implementation issues. Atthis stage, more than 10 universities, in Brazil, China,France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal, TheNetherlands, UK, and US, have joined OTC andannounced plans to include their students in buildingand implementing U-tour.

The open source approach to tourism informationstandards and systems will lower development costsfor most tourist bureaus. They will not have todevelop a data model and should be able to cus-tomize TourCMS more rapidly than building a newinformation system.

Revenue Opportunities

Governments have traditionally funded touristbureaus and information centers, and their Web sitesare offered as a free public service. We do not expectthis to change, but we do anticipate that the newinformation services, particularly those providedduring touring, will be a source of revenue. Inter-views with representatives of tourism agencies in


Rome, Athens, and Nantes indicate that touristbureaus expect additional revenue from these newservices. Present trends suggest that WiFi or mobilephone networks will deliver information in the tour-ing phase. Both of these systems could lend them-selves to a revenue collection system similar to thatof Minitel16, an early information services networkthat is still operational. Information service fees arecollected by France Telecom, which takes its shareand then forwards the remainder to the service pro-vider. A centralized billing system simplifies account-ing for both tourists and providers, and is one less

problem for entrepreneurs tosolve when establishing a newinformation service. If touristbureaus were to share in thisrevenue stream, governmentsmight find they have a highlyefficient method of fundingtheir tourist information ser-vices. For instance, this systemis used by AlloVisit and pro-vided in more than 30 cities in

France by Voxinzebox17. In each city, AlloVisit offersan audio-guided tour of the main memorials througha low cost phone call.

Managing tour guides is often an important problemfor major tourism destinations (e.g. the RomanImperial Forums). Indeed, the three fundamental prob-lems for tourists considered at the beginning of thisarticle are also important issues for the guides. Mobiledigital devices would help them to prepare and con-duct a tour. They could also share knowledge withtheir colleagues to improve the quality of informationdelivered by guides to tourists. Knowledge sharingwould be particularly valuable for novice guides.

Call for Action

A quick search of the Web quickly reveals that tour-ists are inundated with information, but floods arenot friendly. They overwhelm and create disorder.We propose the creation of a buffer or dam betweenthe information flood and the tourist. Like a well-regulated irrigation system, U-tour will enable a ste-ady flow of personalized and useful information tothe tourist.

Those in the hospitality and travel industry havemuch to gain when tourists’ experiences areenhanced by high quality information services. Themaxim ‘good service leads to repeat business’ can berephrased in the information age as ‘good infor-mation leads to repeat business.’ Increasingly, busi-nesses compete on the basis of the quality of infor-mation that they provide to the customer (Ives andLearmonth, 1984). To ensure high quality infor-mation and friendly systems, the hospitality industryneeds, we believe, to participate actively in OTC. The


industry’s knowledge will accelerate the develop-ment and deployment of standards and systems thatenliven tourists’ experiences. Key stakeholders in thetourism business (e.g. hotel operators, restaurantowners, and tour operators) need to get involved toensure that OTC correctly specifies informationneeds and systems characteristics. They stand to gainfrom better-informed customers who have a highquality touring experience. Those who participatewill also potentially enjoy the public relations good-will for assisting students in a variety of courses andcountries to gain valuable educational experiences.

Thus, we hope that this paper, as well as definingthe foundations for the next generation of tourismtechnology, also encourages the hospitality industryto engage in molding and crafting the vision.

The resources for building and deploying U-tourexist. They are plentiful, talented, and motivated.They are the world’s students, who are studying sub-jects such as information systems, tourism, market-ing, cultural heritage preservation, and computerscience. Guided by their professors and industryspecialists and building on the work of each other,students can build and maintain the infrastructure oftourism information systems that will benefit many.Today’s students, tomorrow’s leaders, can leadtoday.

Notes

1. http://www.world-tourism.org/market—research/facts&figures/menu.htm

2. http://www.wttc.org/measure/TSACountryRptCZLA.htm3. Location-based services are those where the service, usu-

ally information, delivered is based on the location of thecustomer (e.g. the location of the nearest ATM).

4. http://www.epinions.com5. http://www.lonelyplanet.com6. Global System for Mobile communications, see

http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/glossary.shtml#g7. http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/shareware/clicker/8. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology for con-

necting electronic devices.9. http://www.apple.com/isync/

10. http://www.alitaliausa.com11. http://www.imc.org/pdi/12. http://www.cvrlab.org13. http://plone.org14. http://www.phpnuke.org


15. http://www.opentourism.org16. http://www.minitel.com17. http://www.voxinzebox.com

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http://www.world-tourism.org/market_research/facts&figures/menu.htm

http://www.world-tourism.org/market_research/facts&figures/menu.htm

http://www.wttc.org/measure/TSACountryRptCZLA.htm

http://www.epinions.com

http://www.lonelyplanet.com

http://www.gsmworld.com/technology/glossary.shtml

http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/shareware/clicker/

http://www.apple.com/isync/

http://www.alitaliausa.com

http://www.imc.org/pdi/

http://www.cvrlab.org

http://plone.org

http://www.phpnuke.org

http://www.opentourism.org

http://www.minitel.com

http://www.voxinzebox.com


RICHARD WATSON, SIGMUND AKSELSEN,Department of MIS, Terry Telenor Research and Devel-College of Business, Univer- opment, P.O. Box 893, 9488sity of Georgia, Athens, GA Harstad, Norway. E-mail:30602-6273, USA. E-mail: sigmund.akselsen@[email protected] .com

Richard Watson holds the J. Sigmund Akselsen is SeniorRex Fuqua Distinguished Research Scientist at Tel-Chair for Internet Strategy enor Research and Develop-at the University of Georgia ment, Norway. His currentwith research interests in U- research interests include

commerce, net-based customer service systems, and context-sensitive applications within the service indus-informations systems leadership. A prolific author, he tries.is also President-Elect of the Association for Infor-mation Systems.

EMMANUEL MONOD, LEYLAND PITT, FacultyUniversity of Nantes, of Business Administration,Nantes, France/Department Simon Fraser University,of MIS, Terry College of Vancouver, Canada. E-Business, University of mail: [email protected], GA 30602-6273,USA. E-mail: monod@gs- Leyland Pitt is Professor ofu.edu Marketing at Simon Fraser

University and AdjunctEmmanuel Monod is Professor at RotterdamAssociate Professor at the School of Management andUniversity of Nantes, visit- Lulea University of Tech-

ing Georgia State University, and Vice-President of the nology, Sweden. His publications have appeared inAssociation for Information Systems. MIT Sloan Management Review and California

Management Review. This is his fourth article inEMJ.


the open tourism consortium:: laying the foundations for the future of tourism

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