Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

8/3/2019 Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

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Application of

Information

Technology in

Travel and

TourismPrepared and Submitted by:

Sucheta Amin (M-11-02)

Sneha Sawant (M-11-51)

Roshni Nambiar (M-11-34)

Shardul Ramteke (M-11-)

Vicky Razdan (M-11-)


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FYMMS Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Introduction

The developments in computer and communication technologies have made it possible to

have rental cars with computerised driving directions and self-service video-terminals at

rental counters in high traffic airports. Fully automated rental transaction systems came into

existence. Yet another major contribution of technological developments in computers and

communication systems to tourism is the computerised reservation systems (CRS). These

systems can now inform subscribers about schedules, fares and seat availability, issue tickets

and boarding passes, record bookings, maintain waiting lists, display preferred airlines or

classes, search for the lowest fare available or the first available non-stop flight and calculatefares for domestic and international itineraries. The system can also make reservations for

other services like hotels, car rentals, cruises, railways, tours, boat charters, theatres and

sporting events. According to WTO, the Internet is revolutionising the distribution of

tourism information and sales. An increasing proportion of Internet users are buying online

and tourism will gain a larger and larger share of the online commerce market. Obviously, the

Internet is having a major impact as a source of information for tourism.

Information Needs in Tourism

Travel is a basic human instinct. Technological revolutions in the last few decades and theconsequent changes in the social systems accelerated its intensity in the current century.

Thus, tourism is presently a mass phenomenon involving every human being in the world.

They need detailed information about each place they intend to visit. The specific elements of

such information needs are:

Geographical information on location, climate, landscape, etc. Attraction features Social customs, culture and other special features of the place Accessibility though air, water, rail and road and availability of scheduled means of

transport

Accommodation, restaurant and shopping facilities Activities and entertainment facilities Seasons of visit and other unique features Quality of facilities and their standard prices including exchange rates Entry and exit formalities and restrictions if any on tourists, etc.

Though the ultimate users of this information are the consumers ie. the tourists, the actual

benefits in money terms accrue to the tourism industry consisting of the destination managers

and service providers.

For tourism businesses, the Internet offers the potential to make information and booking

facilities available to large numbers of tourists at relatively low costs. It also provides a tool

for communication between tourism suppliers, intermediaries, as well as end-consumers.


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There is, therefore, a strong competition amongst various destination countries in the world to

produce and package such information in the most attractive format to attract the consumers

from the tourist generating countries.

The travel intermediaries like travel agents, tour operators, and reservation system store such

information in respect of each destination to service their clients and improve their business.They need the information in the easiest retrieval format so that the information needs of the

clients are met as quickly as possible.

Tourists generally need both static and dynamic information. Information on those features

which do not change rapidly over time is termed as static information. It includes details

information about location, climate, attraction features, history, facilities available, etc.

Information about airline, train and bus schedules, tariffs of transport and accommodation

units and current availability of such facilities is considered as dynamic as they can change

very frequently. These items of information have to be gathered, stored and disseminated on a

real time basis. All types of reservation systems including air, rail and accommodation

sectors contain such information.

Application of Information Technologies

Till a few years ago, the basic sources of information in the tourism sector were pamphlets,

brochures, directories, guide books, etc. produced and published by different countries. These

sources prevail even today, though they are the most inefficient means of information.

The last few decades witnessed the application of computer and communication technologies

in the field of tourism. Two distinct streams of information sources viz, (i) online and (ii)

offline came into existence. Databases containing information about places, tourist attractions

and facilities became available for online access in several countries. The emergence of

computerised reservations system (CRS) opened up a new source of online information on

tourism and are being expanded continuously. The latest sources of online information is

INTERNET which contains some pages on most of the tourist destinations in the world.

Further hotel management and catering technology is fast emerging as an area of information

technology application in the field of tourism.

Electronic Commerce (EC) is an emerging area where business transactions take place via

telecommunications networks, especially the Internet. Electronic commerce describes the

process of buying and selling or exchanging of products, services, and information via

computer networks including the Internet. The Internet has emerged as a major, perhapseventually the major, worldwide distribution channel for goods, services, managerial and

professional jobs. Travel and tourism are illustrating how e-commerce can change the

structure of an industryand in the process create new business opportunities, especially in

the B2B2C arena. The tourism e-market structure, just a B2B2C application, is actually a

tourist information network linking all market participants and reflecting the economic

relationships between them; tourism e-commerce process is only the process of suppliers plus

tourist life cycle, deeply leading to distributed B2B2C application.


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Intermediation

One thing that does become clear in looking at different cases in eBusiness is that there are

different approaches to changing the value chain, and it does not always become shorter. In

some cases, it has been desirable to remove one or more links in the value chain. To take asimple example, a business that had previously sold to retailers via distributors could take a

decision to sell direct electronically, an approach known as Disintermediation. Part of the

rationale is that by shortening the Value Chain, there may be benefits in reduced costs or a

more responsive and efficient service.

Seemingly paradoxically, eBusiness has also allowed the apparent opposite of

Disintermediation in which a new step or steps are introduced to the value chain as new

players find fresh ways to add value to the process. This is known as Reintermediation and

examples here include shopping portals and electronic insurance brokers.

Cybermediation refers to the creation of new kinds of intermediaries that simply could nothave existed prior to the advent of eBusiness and the Internet, in categories including

Searching, Price Discovery, Logistics, Settlement and Trust. Some on-line businesses find

they need to control much of the value chain in order for their proposition to function

correctly.


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Computer Reservation System

A Computer Reservation System is a computerized system for saving and retrieving

information when needed related to air travel. CRS were created and used by airlines and at a

later point they were finally used in tourism intermediaries like travel agencies.

What is CRS and GDS?

There have been 3 stages of evolution the first reservation system was called an Airline

Reservation system, the second a Computer Reservation System (CRS) and the third

evolution is todays Global Distribution System (GDS).

CRS and GDS seem to have the same functions but the major difference between these two

systems is that CRS only provide information about airlines whereas by using GDS you can

reserve a ticket, a room in a hotel and also a rental car. This is why they are called Global

Distribution Systems because you can use GDS to reserve basically everything.

CRS bundle information about prices, availabilities and reservation possibilities of package

tours, flights, hotels, rented cars, ferries, cruises, courses, penalties and other products in

large computing centres. Technically by the binding of the computing centre of the CRS to

many different service providers (tour operators/airline among other things) one realizes, over

which the respective inquiries of the travel agencies are continued to lead directly to the

different offerers. The CRS takes over besides the account of the costs as well as if necessary

also the disbursement of Incentives, resulting with a reservation, thus remuneration of the

service providers for the travel agencies. The CRS supplies in addition, and offers auxiliary

products to evaluations for the Back office systems of the travel agencies for the support ofsales.

Most tourism firms process their reservations through a computerised database called

Computer Reservation System (CRS), which handles details of inventory, schedules and

prices among other details. CRSs run on mainframes, minicomputers or microcomputers and

are usually connected through data communication links to terminals within various branches

of the company. CRSs are not to be confused with global distribution systems, but are often

electronically connected to them for bookings.

Computer reservation systems are primarily used for inventory management by airlines,

hotels, and other tourism and hospitality enterprises. Enhanced and sophisticated CRSconfigurations and functionality offer companies an integrated solution for several processes

including managing sales, bookings, customer relationship management and service, other

marketing practices, yield management, payments and accounting even at a one-to-one

customer basis. Integrated CRSs aim to organize companies internally by enabling

organizational reengineering/ restructuring changes that in turn streamline processes and

foster functional efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, the term central reservation system

refers to the CRS developed by hotel chains for centralizing the reservation process of all

their affiliated properties and enabling multichain management. The major benefits of such

systems are operational efficiencies and staff reductions.
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Briefly outlined processes, functionalities, and benefits of a CRS as follows:

* Flexible inventory booking capability

* Immediate availability update

* Overbooking management

* Complete and detail reservations screen

* Individual and group reservations and blockings* Travel agency information entry, activity reports and commission handling

* Guest information enquiry

* Reservations linked to city ledger

* Advance deposit posting and auditing

* Request for deposit and deposit received

* Modifications and cancellation confirmations

* Free-form comments field on all reservations

* System generated confirmation numbers on all reservations

* User identification

* Confirmations printed automatically or on demand

* Forecast reports* Current and future dates to five years historical information

* Detailed inventory control

* No-shows reports and handling (charging and billing)

* Customer informationpast, present, futureretained in system.

The primary reason for using computers in the handling of reservations is to increase yield

metrics, but this entirely depends on the level of systems integration. This is because CRS not

only help tremendously in processing reservations, but they also support decision-making in

marketing and sales.

Integration between CRSs and distribution channels can improve efficiency, facilitate control,

reduce personnel, and enable more rapid response time to both customers and management

requests, whilst enabling personalized service and relationship marketing. Overall, most

CRSs tend to serve several business functions as follows:

* Improve capacity management and operations efficiency

* Facilitate central room inventory control

* Provide last room availability information

* Offer yield management capability

* Provide better databases access for management purposes

* Enable extensive marketing, sales and operational reports* Facilitate marketing research and planning

* Travel agency tracking and commission payment

* Tracking of frequent flyers and repeat hotel guests

* Direct marketing and personalized service for repeat hotel guests

* Enhance handling of group bookings.

Benefits for Tour Operators & Tourism Product Suppliers

1. Processes transactions online through a shared master merchant account which save on

online merchant start up fees and monthly fees.

2. Provides booking, inventory control, sales, customer analysis and banking reports.
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3. Offer a hot seat feature: Advertise products at a discounted price and sell those last

minute empty seats.

4. Gives the end user the ability to search and compare and buy from multiple operators in

one placea place that is easy and convenient.

5. Real-time inventory booking system allows multiple distributors to sell your product

without the hassle of time-consuming callbacks and double booking.

CRSs can be exploited and identified benefits that such systems integration can provide are as

follows:

* Integration with external reservations networks: Examples here would be airline global

distribution systems, or partners corporate reservation systems. Traditionally, third party

reservation systems such as hotels.com operated by obtaining guaranteed allocations of

rooms from hotels in advance that could then be sold directly to travel agents and the public.However, inventory allocation does not allow the sale of the last available room and

disadvantages efficient multi-channel distribution and yield management strategies. To

optimize occupancy and average room rates, seamless integration between company and

external reservation systems is required so that realtime room and rate inventory is made

available to all distribution channels.

* In-house reservations networks: Hotel chains and consortia integrate their CRSs with

each property based reservation system. Seamless connectivity allows cross-selling between

hotel properties and multi-unit distribution strategies. Nowadays, intranets are increasingly

used for this purpose.

* Single-property reservations systems: These systems handle reservations that come from

different sources, e.g. telephone, letter, fax etc., solely for a hotel property. This level of

integration refers to the internal integration of the reservation system with other business

systems.

* Property management system (PMS): Integration between the CRS and PMS is required

for enhancing guest services by enabling CRM (customer relationship marketing) practices,

express check-in/out procedures as well as for increasing operational procedures, e.g.housekeeping, staff scheduling, just-in-time procurement.
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Online Transaction Processing

Online transaction processing, or OLTP, refers to a class of systems that facilitate and

manage transaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval transaction

processing.

Requirements

OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) is a methodology to provide end users with access to

large amounts of data in an intuitive and rapid manner to assist with deductions based on

investigative reasoning.

Online Analytical Processing Online transaction processing increasingly requires support for

transactions that span a network and may include more than one company. For this reason,

new online transaction processing software uses client or server processing and brokering

software that allows transactions to run on different computer platforms in a network.

Benefits

Online Transaction Processing has two key benefits: simplicity and efficiency. Reduced

paper trails and the faster, more accurate forecasts for revenues and expenses are both

examples of how OLTP makes things simpler for businesses.

Disadvantages

As with any information processing system, security and reliability are considerations. Onlinetransaction systems are generally more susceptible to direct attack and abuse than their

offline counterparts. When organizations choose to rely on OLTP, operations can be severely

impacted if the transaction system or database is unavailable due to data corruption, systems

failure, or network availability issues. Additionally, like many modern online information

technology solutions, some systems require offline maintenance which further affects the

cost-benefit analysis.

Online Transaction Processing

Online Transaction processing database applications are optimal for managing changing data,

and usually have a large number of users who will be simultaneously performing transactionsthat change real-time data. Although individual requests by users for data tend to reference

few records, many of these requests are being made at the same time. Common examples of

these types of databases are airline ticketing systems and banking transaction systems. The

primary concerns in this type of application are the ACID Properties.
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ACID Properties

Atomicity

The atomicity property identifies that the transaction is atomic. An atomic transaction iseither fully completed, or is not begun at all. Any updates that a transaction might affect on a

system are completed in their entirety. If for any reason an error occurs and the transaction is

unable to complete all of its steps, the then system is returned to the state it was in before the

transaction was started. Atomicity ensures that all of the steps involved in a transaction

complete successfully as a group. If any step fails, no other steps should be completed. An

example of an atomic transaction is an account transfer transaction. The money is removed

from account A then placed into account B. If the system fails after removing the money

from account A, then the transaction processing system will put the money back into account

A, thus returning the system to its original state. This is known as a rollback. So when a

room is booked through internet transfer of money as well as allotment must both be done or

else the entire operation must roll back

.

Consistency

A transaction enforces consistency in the system state by ensuring that at the end of any

transaction the system is in a valid state. If the transaction completes successfully, then all

changes to the system will have been properly made, and the system will be in a valid state. If

any error occurs in a transaction, then any changes already made will be automatically rolled

back. This will return the system to its state before the transaction was started. Since thesystem was in a consistent state when the transaction was started, it will once again be in a

consistent state.

The database inside the hotel in which the room was booked needs to be in consistent even if

there is some sort of hiccup in the transaction due to any problem like internet connection etc.

Concurrency

Concurrency controls in a database system ensure that two users cannot change the same

data, or that one user cannot change a piece of data before another user is done with it. For

example, if you are talking to an airline ticket agent to reserve the last available seat on a

flight and the agent begins the process of reserving the seat in your name, another agent

should not be able to tell another passenger that the seat is available.


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Isolation

When a transaction runs in isolation, it appears to be the only action that the system iscarrying out at one time. If there are two transactions that are both performing the same

function and are running at the same time, transaction isolation will ensure that each

transaction thinks it has exclusive use of the system. This is important in that as the

transaction is being executed, the state of the system may not be consistent. The transaction

ensures that the system remains consistent after the transaction ends, but during an individual

transaction, this may not be the case. If a transaction was not running in isolation, it could

access data from the system that may not be consistent. By providing transaction isolation,

this is prevented from happening. While booking a room online the room must not be

available for booking even while the transaction is being executed.

Durability

A transaction is durable in that once it has been successfully completed, all of the changes it

made to the system are permanent. There are safeguards that will prevent the loss of

information, even in the case of system failure. By logging the steps that the transaction

performs, the state of the system can be recreated even if the hardware itself has failed. The

concept of durability allows the developer to know that a completed transaction is a

permanent part of the system, regardless of what happens to the system later on. Once a room

has been booked that room must show the status as booked (ie unavailable for booking,neither online nor at the hotel reception)


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Payment Gateway

A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes

payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar.

It is the equivalent of a physical point of sale terminal located in most retail outlets. It is aseparate service and acts as an intermediary between the merchants' shopping cart and all the

financial networks involved with the transaction, including the customers' credit card issuer

and your merchant account. Payment gateways protect credit card details by encrypting

sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, to ensure that information is passed

securely between the customer and the merchant and also between merchant and the payment

processor. It reviews validity, encrypts transaction details, ensures they are sent to the correct

destination and then decrypts the responses which are sent back to the shopping cart.

How payment gateways work

A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information between a payment portal (such as

a website, mobile phone or IVR service) and the Front End Processor or acquiring bank.

When a customer places an order from a payment gateway-enabled merchant, the payment

gateway performs a variety of tasks to process the transaction:

1. A customer places order on website by pressing the 'Submit Order' or equivalentbutton, or perhaps enters their card details using an automatic phone answering

service.

2. If the order is via a website, the customer's web browser encrypts the information tobe sent between the browser and the merchant's webserver. This is done via SSL

(Secure Socket Layer) encryption.3. The merchant then forwards the transaction details to their payment gateway. This is

another SSL encrypted connection to the payment server hosted by the payment

gateway.

4. The payment gateway forwards the transaction information to the payment processorused by the merchant's acquiring bank.

5. The payment processor forwards the transaction information to the card association(e.g., Visa/MasterCard)

1. If an American Express or Discover Card was used, then the processor acts asthe issuing bankand directly provides a response of approved or declined to

the payment gateway.

2. Otherwise, the card association routes the transaction to the correct cardissuing bank.

6. The credit card issuing bankreceives the authorization request and sends a responseback to the processor (via the same process as the request for authorization) with a

response code. In addition to determining the fate of the payment, (i.e. approved or

declined) the response code is used to define the reason why the transaction failed

(such as insufficient funds, or bank link not available)

7. The processor forwards the response to the payment gateway.8. The payment gateway receives the response, and forwards it on to the website (or

whatever interface was used to process the payment) where it is interpreted as a

relevant response then relayed back to the cardholder and the merchant.9. The entire process typically takes 23 seconds.
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10.The merchant submits all their approved authorizations, in a "batch", to theiracquiring bankfor settlement via their processor.

11.The acquiring bankdeposits the total of the approved funds in to the merchant'snominated account. This could be an account with the acquiring bank if the merchant

does their banking with the same bank, or an account with another bank.

12.The entire process from authorization to settlement to funding typically takes 3 days.Payment Gateway Process

The Visitor Front End

Lets start by considering the pages that your visitors see. These pages allow your visitor to

define what they are paying for, instigate the payment process, and then enter their credit card

and other

information.

First, your

visitor needs

to choose

what they are

paying for

for instance, a

ticket or hotel

room.

With a pricedefined, they then fill in a payment form with their informationat a minimum their name,

credit card information, and address.

When visitor enters their information and clicks Submit, a number of backend processes

are kicked off.

The Payment Gateway and Fraud Prevention

The first backend process is a check of the credit card to try to verify that the card and the

charge are valid.

When your visitorclicks Submit, a

processor called the

Payment Gateway

takes over. The

Payment Gateway

the little man in red

in our diagram

handles the actual

backend

communications and

transactions,

contacting the bank,
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reporting back on the results, and moving the money.

The Payment Gateway starts by checking to make sure that the credit card number is valid.

To decrease the possibility of fraud, it may also check to make sure that the address, name, or

credit card CSV code (the three digit code on the back of the card) match. Fraud is

unfortunately common even if youre just processing donations, so these checks are animportant step in the process.

If the card is rejected, the Payment Gateway sends back word to your website so that you can

notify the visitor. Otherwise, the process continues.

Merchant Account

The money is routed by the Payment Gateway into a bank account called a Merchant

Account.

When the

charge is

accepted as

valid, the

Payment

Gateway

initiates a

process by

which money

is transferred

from thecredit card

company to a

type of

specialized

bank account called a Merchant Account. A Merchant Account does nothing but hold credit

card payments, but you cant accept credit cards without one. Even if you have one for

accepting credit card payments by phone, you may need a different one for online payments.

Thanks, Receipt, and Reports

With the payment successful processed, the visitor is notified that their payment went

through, and the transaction is viewable in reporting tools.


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When the

payment

gateway

reports back

that the card

has beencharged, the

visitor is

shown a

confirmation

screen

confirming

that

everything

went through

successfully.

They are alsotypically

emailed a

receipt at this

point.

Usually, any reports are updated in real time, so that youll be able to see within seconds that

a payment was made.

Synching Data

Youll need to determine how to get the payment data from the payment processor into yourown database.

The reporting tools that

automatically show the payment

information are likely to be different

from the application you typically

use to track constituent information.

In order to synch the two sources,

you should be able to at least

manually export a text file from the

payment processing application andload that into your database. If you

have many transactions, its also

worth looking into ways that you can

automatically synch the two data

sources with the help of a

programmer.

Receiving the Money

Last but certainly not least, the money needs to be moved from the Merchant Account to your

bank account.


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The money in the Merchant Account

isnt accessible to you. If the

Merchant Account is in your name,

however, the money will

automatically be deposited into your

more traditional bank account withina couple of days. If the MerchantAccount is in a vendors name, that

vendor will need to pay you. Vendors

typically pay once or twice monthly,

either via check or by wire transfer.

Putting it All Together

So here it is

all back

together

again.

Whew!

Payment

processing

isnt

straightforwar

d, but it

doesnt haveto be baffling. None of the steps are particularly technical or complicated - you just need a

sense of the big picture.

Security

Since the customer is usually required to enter personal details, the entire communicationof 'Submit Order' page (i.e. customer - payment gateway) is often carried out through

HTTPS protocol.

To validate the request of the payment page result, signed request is often used - which isthe result of the hash function in which the parameters of an application confirmed by a

secret word, known only to the merchant and payment gateway. To validate the request of the payment page result, sometimes IP of the requesting server

has to be verified.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paymenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_addresshttp://www.idealware.org/articles/images/pp_overview.gifhttp://www.idealware.org/articles/images/pp_overview.gifhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_addresshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paymenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_(computing)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicationhttp://www.idealware.org/articles/images/pp_overview.gif


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Case Study

We will study about one of these portals in detail i.e. YATRA.COM

There are many agencies that provide travel services to India, arguably one of the most

alluring locations on the globe. Yatra is one of these, and if you are thinking about visiting

that far-off and mythical land you can always try it out and see if it is what you need.

The site comes complete with all the resources you will need for arranging such an

experience, as a Book Your Trip section is prominently featured and it will let you specify

the kind of trip youre after, be it a round trip or a one way travel experience. When doing so,

you also have to set down booking details like your point of departure and your desired

destination, as well as passenger details. It is likewise possible to find flights within a short

time range if you have to travel in a hurry, either for business or for personal reasons.

Further resources include both a Lowest airfares to India and a Holidays by theme

section, alongside a travel guide which touches upon accommodation and remarkable

destinations.

Lastly, live help is provided via a chat feature that will let you engage in conversation with

travel specialists that will point you in the right direction.

Before we jump onto the technical aspect of a tourism website we need to understand

what a website is and how it works?

A website is essentially a client server application. (Providers of a resource or service arecalled servers, and service requesters are called clients). Servers are powerful computers

dedicated to managing disk drives (file servers), printers (print servers), or network traffic

(network servers). Clients are PCs or workstations on which users run applications. (In case

of a website the client is the web browser).

Websites generally follow a multi-tier architecture (often referred to as n-tier architecture) in

which thepresentation, the applicationprocessing, and the datamanagementare logically

separate processes. The number of tiers in a website varies based on the complexity of the

application.

Yatra.com

Almost all websites incorporate 3-tier architecture. The three layers are as follows -

1. The user interface (client)The client runs on the user's computer. In case of awebsite the client is the web browser on which you have opened the web site.

The site on itself is just a module for presenting information to the user. As such it

doesnt hold any processing logic. Whenever a user enters some data, the website

sends this information the middle tier. The middle tier then processes the data and


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sends a response to the client which is displayed on the website as a result of the

users actions.

However to some of the data validations do happen at the client side. For e.g. if you

enter characters in the mobile number field, the data is validated before it is sent to the

middle tier and you get an error response. This saves time and effort.

A Client-side Programming Language is used to manipulate the data on the client

interface.

2. Middle tier- It is the functional module that actually processes data. This runs on aserver and is often called the application server (any PC can act as a server, provided

it has enough RAM and processor speed to manage the data processing).

In case of a website, the web server is installed on the application server machine. A

Web server is a piece of computer software that can respond to a browser's request for

data, and deliver it to the browser through the Internet.

The website is hosted on the web server, meaning the website resides on the webserver. The web server is responsible for the transfer of data between the client and

the application server via the internet.

This tier is also the brains of the website. Based on the business logic, all the data

submitted by the user is processed and the required output is generated. The web

server then takes this output and sends it to the client, which in turn displays it to the

user.

A Server-side Programming Language is used to process the data.


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3. DBMS - A database management system (DBMS) that stores the data required by themiddle tier. This tier runs on a second server called the database server.

All the information is stored here. Generally the database server is centrally located

and is accessed by several application servers. Sometimes both the web server and the

database server reside on the same machine. Then such a setup is known as a 2-Tier

application.

In simple words

Information is presented to the user in the First Tier. The data processing or the business logic is implemented in the Second / Middle Tier. And the Database used to store all the information resides on the Third Tier.


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The below table elaborates the software used by Yatra.com to implement its computer

reservations system.

Content Management System

Liferay 5.2.3

Liferay Portal is an open source web enterprise portal

based on Java. It is a software platform for building

websites and web applications

Server-side Programming Languages

PHP

PHP is a popular scripting language for creating web

pages.

Java

Java is a general-purpose language originally

developed by Sun Microsystems.

Client-side Programming Language

JavaScript

JavaScript is a lightweight, object-oriented, cross-

platform scripting language, mainly used within web

pages.

JQuery

JQuery is a JavaScript library that simplifies HTML

document traversing, event handling and animating

Markup Languages

XHTML Transitional 1.0 & HTML

Transitional 4.0

Transitional version of XHTML. Used to design the

web site

Web Servers

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat is an open source Java servlet

container that functions as a web server, developed by

the Apache Software Foundation. It provides a "pure

Java" HTTP web server environment for Java code torun.

Traffic Analysis Tool

Omniture

Omniture Web Analytics is a web site traffic analysis

service.


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CONCLUSION

Tourism industry in India is growing and it has vast potential for generating employment and

earning large amount of foreign exchange besides giving a fillip to the countrys overall

economic and social development. But much more remains to be done. Eco-tourism needs tobe promoted so that tourism in India helps in preserving and sustaining the diversity of the

India's natural and cultural environments. Tourism in India should be developed in such a

way that it accommodates and entertains visitors in a way that is minimally intrusive or

destructive to the environment and sustains & supports the native cultures in the locations it

is operating in. Moreover, since tourism is a multi-dimensional activity, and basically a

service industry, it would be necessary that all wings of the Central and State governments,

private sector and voluntary organisations become active partners in the endeavour to attain

sustainable growth in tourism if India is to become a world player in the tourism industry.

To conclude, CRSs are central to the hospitality industry and are becoming the digital

nervous system of the hospitality value chain. Due to the current technological advances and

economic development, CRSs face several challenges including: their immigration to

customer-centered services and infrastructure for providing personalized guest services and

CRM practices; adoption ofwireless solutions for guests and hotel staff services, e.g.

reservations, check-in/out on the move, mobile control and monitoring of occupancy rates;

linkages to other electronic systems of partners or third parties for enabling coopetition

models (coopetition being a judicious mixture of cooperation and competition by which

businesses can gain advantage) and boosting synergies.

On the whole it can be said that Information technology has left an indelible mark in the

application area of Tourism and Travel. In the coming years, areas like Travel RecommenderSystems, GIS, Space Tourism etc will gain popularity and will help in giving a new

dimension to the travel and tourism sector. The International market which is growing has

been given a shot in the arm with introduction of IT and will stand to gain further from it.
http://hotelmule.com/wiki/Economic-developmenthttp://hotelmule.com/wiki/Infrastructurehttp://hotelmule.com/wiki/Wirelesshttp://hotelmule.com/wiki/Wirelesshttp://hotelmule.com/wiki/Infrastructurehttp://hotelmule.com/wiki/Economic-development

Documents

Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism