Tourism & Technology The unending journey of an evolution

Tourism Industry : Growth & Prospects Over the past six decades, tourism has experienced continued expansion

and diversification, becoming one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world.

The number of international arrivals shows an evolution from a mere 25 million international arrivals in 1950 to an estimated 806 million in 2005, corresponding to an average annual growth rate of 6.5%.

According to Tourism Towards 2030, UNWTO’s recently updated, long-term outlook and assessment of future tourism trends, the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide is expected to increase by 3.3% a year on average from 2010 to 2030. This represents some 43 million more international tourist arrivals every year, reaching a total of 1.8 billion arrivals by 2030.

Based on the information from countries with data available, tourism’s contribution to worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated at some 5%. Tourism’s contribution to employment tends to be slightly higher and is estimated in the order of 6-7% of the overall number of jobs worldwide (direct and indirect).

For advanced, diversified economies, the contribution of tourism to GDP ranges from approximately 2% for countries where tourism is a comparatively small sector, to over 10% for countries where tourism is an important pillar of the economy. For small islands and developing countries, the weight of tourism can be even larger, accounting for up to 25% in some destinations.

Technology : An indispensible element

Technology has always had an important bearing on the growth & prospects of this sector.

Innovations in transportation and communication technologies have rendered geographical barriers rather meaningless.

The importance of information technology in tourism, especially of the World Wide Web, has increased tremendously over the past years and this trend will certainly continue.

There are currently an estimated 1.8 billion internet users globally. There has been substantial growth in all world regions, with regions like Africa and the Middle East both recording growth of over 1,600% in the last 9 years.

Asia and the Pacific remain in the top position with over 760 million, representing over 40% of the total worldwide online population.

Accordingly, various high tech information and communication technologies are in use in the tourism sector around the world. They are used for tourism product development, marketing, distribution and training of tourism sector personnel.

These technologies are so indispensable in order to find out and satisfy the ever-changing demands for tourism products.

Tourism Industry: Components

AttractionAccommodati

on

Transportation

Advertising

Components

Attraction sector which comprises manmade and natural attractions which are developed to satisfy visitors educational, recreational, aesthetic needs etc.

Advertising sector, which includes advertising through mass media and the Internet.

Accommodation sector, all types of establishments that offers lodging to visitors (Hotel, Motel, Guest houses, caravans etc.)

Transport sector, which includes air, water and surface transport.

Technology: The underlying thread

The attraction owners particularly the national tourist offices discharge their duty of promoting their country’s tourist attractions using the information technology products. Information through promotional videos, Internet web Sites, television advertisements and travel documentaries are the main information dissemination tools.

Any individual or group wishing to travel to any part of the world now has an easy access to the accommodation service providers. A visitor can access information about the kind of hotels at the destination, their ranges of product, the price and other relevant information without leaving his/her office or home. The information can be obtained aided by still or moving pictures in order to give an exact feature of an accommodation, facilities and services of ones choice. At a destination also visitors are at ease during their stay in every respect, in getting information about their business, family or other information back home. They are also at ease to relax with the videos and television entertainment programs, which nowadays are part and parcel of many accommodation units.

Travel and tourism fit especially well with interactive media because they are an information intensive industry where transactions can be made online, and current Web users are heavy users of travel and tourism products and services. Interactive media calls for interactive marketing. “The essence of interactive marketing is the use of information from the customer rather than about the customers”. It differs from traditional marketing since it is based on a dialogue instead of a one-way communication, and it deals with individual consumers instead of mass markets.

Technology: The underlying thread

Transport provides the essential link between tourism origin and destination areas and facilitates the movement of travellers. An Airplane flies with the help of modern information technology equipment, which provides information ranging from weather, altitude and other information to the pilot to communication made during emergency by the pilot with other airplanes and air traffic control stations.

In-flight entertainment is also a product of information technology, video games, video films are examples. In the case of buses/coaches and taxis, in many countries with developed tourism business, they are equipped with radio communication systems for various uses. This communication ensures the safety of tourists.

Fast and easy information flow is of paramount importance to build confidence in the traveling public. In recent years, the confidence built due to the use of modern IT has been demonstrated by a tremendous increase in the number of travelers worldwide.

Recent advances in mobile computing, computer graphics, wireless and sensor technologies are rapidly changing the face of tourism industry by enhancing the existing infrastructure.

Further, globalization of technologies has ensured fast spread of innovations to farthest corners of the world.

Increased interconnectivity and technology revolution have meant consolidation of fragmented tourism products, cost effectiveness and enhancement of forecasting techniques for tourism product sellers. For consumers it has meant ease of purchase and availability of quantity & quality of organized information.

For example, mobile phones & related technologies are fast becoming an inseparable part of human life. And for travellers these technologies by having transformed the search for information into a more interactive and fast process, have become an indispensible companion in travel plans.

Mobile’s Impact

New & Innovative Technologies• A data mining type of software• Uses the power of customer databases to identify customers who have similar profiles like preferences, interests, and travel patterns, etc. based on previously accumulated customer knowledge.

• The findings are used for direct marketing. E.g.: Amazon.com

Collaborative Filtering

• Also a form of data mining. • This software rests on the belief that people live busy lives and want other people to look after their needs.

• This type of software tracks and monitors the preferences and purchasing behaviors of consumers.

• Thus, it can customize products/services based on needs and preferences and perform direct marketing accordingly.

Personalization Software/Profili

ng• Based on the belief that people want more choices but they just do not want to be burdened with those choices.

• This type of software takes criteria set by customers and goes into digital databases. It then gets available choices for the customers.

• This type of software not only automatically finds information for customers but also narrows down the choices and lets customers find the best deal.

Knowledge-Based

Software

New & Innovative Technologies

• Enables electronic transactions.• Simplifies a very complex buying-payment process, bypasses

intermediaries, lowers the entry barriers into the tourism industry and increases competition.

• Assists in monitoring causal relationships to understand the relationship between the effect of ads and purchase patterns.

Electronic Payment

• Virtual reality displays three-dimensional worlds.• Web casting provides online live videos and events• People obtain an accurate view of the destination before they

visit it.• Well formulated expectations of what they will see at their

travel destination.

Computer Reservation

System

• The technology works by using computers of special kind and leased telephone lines. The travel agent is connected on line to the central host computer system or CRS.

• In this system it is possible that airliners, Hotels and car rental companies can talk to the travel agent and vise versa.

• This system contributes to a great extent in increasing sales volume and giving precise information on the availability and selling the products efficiently ensuring substantial profit gain.

Virtual Reality &

Web Casting

New & Innovative Technologies

• Distribute reservation, and information services to sales outlets around the world.

• Link several airlines and travel principals into a complex network of PCs, telecommunications and large mainframe computers.

• The end users comprise travel agents with a single reservation system to support the sale of airline seats and related travel products such as hotel and car hire, via Personal Computer.

Global Distribution Systems

• GIS applications in tourism have been confined to recreational facility inventory, tourism-based land management, visitor impact assessment, and recreation-wildlife conflict.

• Site-specific information about sources of visitors origin and destination, travel motivation, spatial patterns of recreation and tourism use, visitor expenditure patterns, levels of use and impacts, and suitability of sites for recreation/tourism development

Geographic

Information Systems

How CRS Works

Virtual Reality to Augmented Reality

Until recently, Virtual Reality (VR) technologies were one of the most outstanding technologies.

The basic idea was the total immersion of the user in a virtual world generated by a computer.

Although this concept is currently one of the most popular with multiple application domains, the main disadvantage of VR is that there is no relationship between the user and the real world.

Therefore, Augmented Reality technologies are becoming increasingly popular, not only among the scientific community but also for the general public.

Recent advances in mobile computing, computer graphics, wireless and sensor technologies allow for the fast development of Augmented Reality (AR) applications on smartphones.

A visual AR system enhances or augments the surroundings of the user with virtual information that is registered in 3D space and seems to co-exist with the real world.

Unlike traditional AR devices, such as head-mounted displays (HMDs) and mobile laptops, smartphones combine all necessary technologies for augmentation in one small device. This is also the first medium to introduce AR to the mass market which has enormous potential for tourism.

In a typical GPS-based smartphone AR application for outdoor use, the user points the device towards physical objects in her surroundings.

She is then able to see additional virtual information overlaid on top of the real-world camera view through virtual annotations.

The type of content and amount of information within the virtual annotations varies amongst applications and can include video, images, text or symbols for different types of landmarks.

Available data includes descriptions of tourist attractions, restaurants and monuments. Other useful information, such as Wi-Fi spots, ATMs, car parks, transportation, local news items, and weather can also be displayed in AR-view. Several available applications allow access to geo-coded user-generated content, such as tweets, videos and photos, as well as comments and recommendations about a place

Augmented Reality Applications

Compared with Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality enhances the real world instead of replacing it. The user can view the real world enhanced with additional 3D graphics superimposed to his/her field of view.

Museums and art galleries already use digital technologies for the collection, preservation, exploration and diffusion of Arts and Cultural Heritage.

However, parallel to the development of the concept of cultural park, Augmented Reality technologies are gaining a great importance on the virtual reconstruction of historical monuments, helping curators, archaeologists or historians to reproduce on site historical places as they were in their golden period.

It is obvious that applications within the Arts and Cultural Heritage should fulfill different requirements, such as the attractiveness and user-friendliness for the user, an educational value, the reusability of the data and the global availability.

In the future, it will be possible to walk without a human guide through an exhibition, museum or historical site, exploring the environment and getting personalized information about the profile of each visitor.

Conclusion Among the cyclical succession of symbolic terms that have become part of global

tourism discourse, ‘innovation’ and ‘technological change’ have started to occupy a privileged place and it is highly likely that they are here to stay.

As technology is evolving faster than ever before, it has made most travellers around the world much more technology-savvy than in the past.

The internet has revolutionized the tourism industry more than any other factor in the last few decades.

Also, as more people are connected to each other, with access to the vast pool of information available online, an increasing number of travelers are seeking information via the internet prior to making any travel decisions.

The advances in connectivity and processing power that have been made in ICT in recent years are undeniable.

At the same time the ‘smart world’ in which we live whose landscape –albeit in a permanent process of evolution is becoming friendlier, offering clearer, solutions which serve to reduce time and money and opening new paths towards the personalization of products and services.

Today, tourism activity is increasingly being shaped by price comparison and combination technology; new applications for mobiles that offer a wide range of opportunities are being developed; social networks are consolidating themselves within a more transparent market in which citizens are able to provide services together; changes in the concept of the value chain are producing new business models.

In short, change is becoming more obvious and constant, just like the opportunities that it is creating.

The End