The World Tourism Organization (2006)
predicts that by 2020 tourist arrivals around the world will increase over 200%.
Tourism has become a highly competitive business for tourism destinations all over
the world. Competitive advantage is no longer natural, but increasingly driven by
science, information technology, and innovation.
The continuing growth in the use of the Internet has transformed the world into a
global village. For example, e-tourism-related Web sites provide a vast amount of
rich information, maps, pictures, sounds, and services on destinations throughout
the world. A study by Forrester (Forrester, 2005) estimates that business-to-business
(B2B) revenues will reach $8.8 trillion in 2005 and business-to-customer (B2C)
revenues in the U.S. will reach $229.9 billion by 2008.
The Internet is already the primary source of tourist destination information for
travelers. About 95% of Web users use the Internet to gather travel-related information
and about 93% indicate that they visited tourism Web sites when planning for
vacations (Lake, 2001). The number of people turning to the Internet for vacation and
travel planning has increased more than 300% over the past 5 years.
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