Lorenzo Cantoni

Future research issues in IT and tourism

The objective of this manifesto (as a result of the JITT workshop in June 2014) is to identify a list of pivotal research topics and issues in e-tourism. E-tourism can be seen as everything that happens electronically in the travel and tourism industry/experience; more formally it is defined as the design, implementation and application of IT and ecommerce solutions in the travel and tourism industry as well as the analysis of the impact of the respective technical and economic processes and market structures on all the involved actors and especially on the traveller’s experience. In tourism as an “information business”, Information Technology has always played an important role since the 1960s with the computerized reservation systems/global distribution systems; these were one of the first world-wide electronic networks. And since the beginning of the Web in the early 1990s, travel and tourism was and is a major application domain for Web-based services. As such, the domain is also a major driver of technological innovation. This manifesto provides guidelines on strategic research issues for the research community, but as such it is also conceived as a basis document for industry and policy makers.

Destinations' information competition and Web reputation.

Destination managers are investing considerable effort (i.e., time, resources, and money) to market their destinations on the Internet. In addition to official destination websites, many unofficial websites are populating the results pages of search engines, diffusing almost the same contents as official destinations websites. The aim of this study is to investigate the information market available to the traveler searching for destination-related information in the so-called online tourism space. Search engines are indexing not only official websites, but also any other websites such as blogs, review websites, wikis, reviews, etc., which are available online. Starting from a log file analysis for a given destination, a set of nine keywords was used to perform search activities on two major search engines (Google and Yahoo!). Search results were first organized and described in order to describe the destinations’ information competitors. Second, a content analysis study was performed in order to examine topics and arguments of the retrieved results that are shaping the Web reputation of destinations. The article shows that unofficial sources of information are equally important with respect to officially provided information. Hence, destinations need to manage their brand and online reputation holistically by attempting to coordinate the players offering information about themselves and also amalgamating the entire range of information and service providers on platforms of experience creation.

Applying a Conceptual Framework to Analyze Online Reputation of Tourism Destinations

Destination managers are investing considerable efforts (time and money) in order to market their destination online without considering that unofficial information competitors (e.g. blogs, wiki, media sharing website etc) are gaining more and more popularity among internet users. This research uses online reputation as a metric to make sense out of the huge amount of user generated contents available online applying a conceptual framework to the reputation analysis: Destination Online Reputation (DORM). The model, derived from the popular models used in corporate reputation analysis has been tested within the tourism online domain accessible trough search engine of a popular English destination: London. Results demonstrate the validity of the model in understanding and managing destination online reputation.

Cultural Destination Usability: The Case of Visit Bath

This research describes the usability evaluation of the website of Bath’s Destination Management Organization (DMO). A proven usability methodology called MiLE+ has been used and a Usability kit (Ukit) for the e Tourism (and particularly for the web communication of cultural destination) field has been created. The Ukit is composed by a library of scenarios of use (user profiles, user goals, user tasks) and heuristics for the evaluation. Ukit has been created and validated also thanks to usage analysis (1 year time frame) which has been performed also to confirm, where possible, the results of the inspection.

MySwitzerland.com: analysis of online communication and promotion.

This research investigates the current state of technology adoption of a popular tourism destination: Switzerland. This case study has been elaborated leveraging on existing literature, public documents, and private statistics; it describes the importance of technology-mediated communication and promotion within the Swiss National Tourism Board, highlighting the achievements and envisaging the future steps. Thanks to an online communication model, the website of the Swiss Tourism Board (MySwitzerland.com) has been investigated, taking into account the following dimensions: content functionalities, graphical user interface, people who administrate, people who visit the website, and information market. The analysis shows the importance of the online channel and the technology adoption of this destination management organization.

eLearning Offers by Destination Management Organizations

Tourism has been and is being deeply affected at all levels by Information and Communication Technologies in general, and the Internet in particular. In this paper the peculiar case of digital technologies being used by national Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) to offer learning experiences — eLearning — to Travel Agents and Tour Operators is presented and analyzed. Among all United Nations countries, 37 offer an eLearning program to better equip travel professionals in performing their consulting and selling activities. All those courses have been attended online and analyzed, in order to outline their main characteristics and their advantages, as reported by the course providers themselves. The researched field has proved to be very interesting and promising, thus future research lines are suggested and outlined.

The Use of Internet Communication by Catholic Congregations: A Quantitative Study

This article presents a first attempt to measure the use of the internet by all 5,812 Catholic religious congregations and autonomous institutes worldwide (with 858,988 members). The research was conducted through a questionnaire sent by e-mail, hence first selecting those institutions which at least have an access to internet communication through an e-mail account (2,285: 39.3% of the total), receiving 437 responses (19.1% of the e-mail owners). The study shows great differences between centralized institutes and autonomous ones: the former ones make a higher use of the Internet than the latter ones; moreover, differences are also found among centralized institutes, namely between male and female ones. Two explanatory elements have been found, both depending on the own mission (charisma) of institutes: (1) first, the different approach to the external world: the institutes more devoted to contemplation and less active in the outside world make limited and basic use of the Internet, if any; (2) second, institutes whose aim is to assist poor and sick persons tend to use the internet less than the others, due to their different prioritization of resources.

Hotel Mobile Apps. The Case of 4 and 5 Star Hotels in European German-Speaking Countries

The importance of mobile internet for travel and tourism has been widely acknowledged, nonetheless the different typologies of mobile applications, their design and usefulness are still under researched. In order to contribute to such analysis, this paper studies the “supply side” of hotel mobile applications adopting two research approaches, which complement each other. First, it draws a comprehensive map of contents and services offered by 80 iOS mobile apps of 4 and 5 star individual hotels as well as hotel chains in European German-speaking countries. Second, beside such objective analysis, the point of view of hotel managers is considered, studying both those whose hotel/chain features an app, and those who are not or not yet offering one. The main drivers for publishing an app are: increasing the loyalty and promoting special offers as well as enhancing the interaction with the guests and providing information about the destination. The main reasons for not publishing an app are: perceived irrelevance for the business, absence of added value to the guests’ satisfaction, difficulty to estimate the return on investment as well as lack of economic resources.

“Digital Natives” and learning with the ICTs. The “GenY @ work” research in Ticino, Switzerland

This article presents the route and the historical roots of the successful expression “digital natives” and introduces the critical debate recently arisen to show its limits and the undemonstrated assumptions it is based on. The paper also presents a research conducted in Canton Ticino (Switzerland), whose purpose was to study the use of the ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) by the young employees of GenY (people born after 1980). This research enabled both to better understand the population studied and to observe how some of the assumptions about GenY and digital natives are nothing more than the result of huge generalizations. The results encourage local researches to re-evaluate and consider the limits due to contextual issues.

Investigating perception changes in teachers attending ICT curricula through self-efficacy

This paper introduces the construct of Self-Efficacy as a method to measure the impact that ICT-enhanced teacher training has on teachers. Firstly, Self-Efficacy and its related sub-constructs, Computer Self-Efficacy and Teacher Self-Efficacy, are presented. Secondly, three research settings where the construct have been tested are introduced: two related to BET K-12 (Brazilian Elearning Teacher training in K-12) project and one related to MELISSA (Measuring ELearning Impact in primary Schools in South African disadvantaged areas). Finally, results of the three experiments are presented and discussed.