Valeria Minghetti

Digital Divide in Tourism

Tourism is an important wealth creator at both global and local levels. An appropriate diffusion of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in this sector can improve the social and economic impacts, from which many citizens and organizations in developed and developing countries can benefit.This article analyzes digital divide and proposes an integrated theoretical framework to explore the relevant factors that lead to unequal access and use of ICTs for tourists and destinations. It integrates the technical, social, and motivational aspects derived from different approaches to digital divide to demonstrate how these factors affect the capacity of markets and destinations to meet and interact effectively in a global tourism environment.

Building Customer Value in the Hospitality Industry: Towards the Definition of a Customer-Centric Information System

Increasing occupancy rates and revenue by improving customer experience is the aim of modern hospitality organizations. To achieve these results, hotel managers need to have a deep knowledge of customers’ needs, behavior, and preferences and be aware of the ways in which the services delivered create value for the customers and then stimulate their retention and loyalty. In this article a methodological framework to analyze the guest–hotel relationship and to profile hotel guests is discussed, focusing on the process of designing a customer information system and particularly the guest information matrix on which the system database will be built.

Ranking assessment systems for responsible tourism products and corporate social responsibility practices

Responsible tourism and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have a significant role in promoting the integration of sustainable practices in the tourism industry. The paper presents the results of a study carried out on reporting programmes assessing the “responsibility level” of tourism companies. It aims at developing a tool to encourage and support enterprises, especially small companies, in behaving in a more responsible way and adopt systems to assess their business responsibility. After an overview of the literature regarding the concept of responsible tourism and CSR and a description of the reporting programmes, a quantitative model (the analytic hierarchy process) has been implemented to clarify the main attributes, the strengths, and the weaknesses of the assessment systems and to determine their overall effectiveness with respect to different criteria.

Reengineering the museum's role in the tourism value chain: towards an IT business model.

At the beginning of the 21st century, museums find themselves struggling to maintain audience in competition with an increasing number of leisure and cultural attractions. Their traditional mission is leaving room to a strategic approach in which conservation and marketing harmonize to create new cultural experiences that appeal to leisure consumers and attract sponsors. The electronic management of contents, reference communities, and distribution channels offers valuable insights and solutions to these institutions. This article outlines the competitive responses that can be adopted by online museums, discusses the reengineering of their role in the tourism market, and proposes a prototype of a multimedia portal aimed at creating valuable synergies between cultural and tourist services.

Measuring Quality of Information Services Combining Mystery Shopping and Customer Satisfaction Research to Assess the Performance of Tourist Offices

Tourist information offices (TIOs) are an important external information source in the tourists’ decision-making process. Assessing the quality of TIO information services implies measuring both technical quality, that is, the outcome of the service performance, and functional quality, that is, the quality of the whole delivery process. The article presents a methodology to correlate and combine mystery shopping and customer satisfaction research in order to assess the overall performance of TIOs at destination and discusses the effectiveness of this approach compared with a separate application of the two methods. The study is part of a project aimed at providing local authorities and TIO office managers in the mountain areas of Italy and Austria with an integrated and user-friendly tool to monitor the quality of information delivered to tourists both before and during their visit, evaluate the management of information services and make benchmark comparisons in the future.

The attitude of small and medium-sized tourist enterprises towards Information and Telecommunication Technologies. The case of Italy

In the paper the mechanisms which guide the decision of tourist enterprises to invest or not in ITT are fully analysed. By using a demand-side approach, the different assumptions at the basis of the decision process and the variables that affect the attitude of operators to employ new technologies are investigated. The identification of the main hindrances and opportunities specifically encountered by small and medium-sized tourist firms to the application of ITT provide the basis for a discussion on how a Telecom company can anticipate these developments.

‘Intelligent’ Museum As Value Creator On The Tourism Market: Towards A New Business Model

The educational mandate of museums is being transformed as marketing strategies play an increasingly crucial role in promoting cultural products. The electronic management of contents, reference communities and distribution channels represents a challenge for cultural institutions that wish to gain a competitive advantage on the global market. This paper outlines the competitive responses that can be adopted by on-line museums, discusses the re-engineering of their role on the tourism market and proposes a prototype of a multimedia portal aimed at creating valuable synergies between cultural and tourist services.

Discussion and Future Research

This chapter firstly discusses the main implications of the analysis of reporting systems for responsible tourism and CSR. In particular, it provides tour operators with detailed information on every available scheme and its performance/benefits in order to stimulate their adoption and to support more informed decisions about the system that best responds to their specificities and requirements. The study also enables students and researchers to build or enhance their knowledge about the characteristics and development of the main reporting initiatives available in Europe and to assess the potential of the AHP model for this kind of study. In the second part, future research directions are debated: the opportunity to analyse other reporting systems, developed in other world regions or addressed to other tourism companies (not only to tour operators); the adoption of other criteria for comparing and evaluating systems; the integration of reporting programs with demand-side assessment tools, such as online user-generated contents.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Tourism Industry

Since the mid-1990s, the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) started to emerge and be applied in different industry sectors. CSR arises from several issues: for example the businesses’ need to gain and retain consumer trust and the awareness that companies should take their responsibility for the impacts their activities cause on environment and society. CSR is therefore based on the concept of “triple bottom line”, which replaces the financial bottom line and implies that businesses are responsible for the environmental, social and economic effects they produce. This chapter clarifies the meaning and implication of CSR; explains the role of CSR in building and retaining consumer trust and, finally, explores the state of the art of CSR diffusion in tourism, highlighting the main benefits it brings to the tourism industry and the issues met by tourism companies, in particular by small- and medium-sized enterprises. The analysis points out that although CSR has a positive influence on consumer trust, efficiency, tourism product quality and business competitiveness, its implementation in the tourism industry, and especially in tourism SMEs, is limited by lack of awareness and knowledge and by high investments needed to implement an appropriate action plan.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Tourism Industry: How to Improve CSR through Reporting Systems

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly important in tourism, since there is the need that companies take their responsibility for the impacts produced by their actions and contribute to sustainable development.