ICT and e-business in the tourism industry ICT adoption ... - empirica

Tourism
way Accor adopted a two-tier strategy: on the one hand to benefit from the cost-saving
effects of dis-intermediation while at the same time creating incentives for traditional
intermediaries to promote its services, especially in low seasons.
On the other hand, the case studies on yourGreece, Lithuanian Farm-Stay Tourism and
Adriatica.net represent examples of successful re-intermediation ventures. While
yourGreece and Lithuanian Farm-Stay Tourism are online ventures, Adriatica.net
represents both an online as well as a brick-and-mortar business intermediary.
Adriatica.net initially started as a mere online intermediary but has since established a
strong presence in the brick-and-mortar intermediary business by acquiring several
established traditional travel agencies. Having only started in 2000, it already presents
the biggest online intermediary business in Croatia which has taken away business form
established travel agencies.
The yourGreece and Lithuanian Farm-Stay Tourism case studies have demonstrated the
benefit of co-operation between several smaller players in using intermediaries to
promote and market their services collectively. In the case of yourGreece, the member
hotels of yourGreece have realised that cooperating with each other under the
yourGreece umbrella was more beneficial than working on their own. Initially some of the
hotels were afraid of cooperating with hotels which they regarded as direct competitors.
However, they quickly realised that in an increasingly competitive market, they have
better chances if they work together. Similarly, in the case of the Lithuanian Farm-Stay
Tourism, Lithuanian farm-stay owners benefited from cooperating under the umbrella of
the Lithuanian Countryside Tourism Association (LCTA) to jointly promote their services
via the Lithuanian Farm-Stay Tourism website.
However, cooperation under the umbrella of an intermediary can also be problematic, as
was shown in the yourGreece and Lithuanian Farm-Stay Tourism case studies: In both
cases, the lack of ICT skills and IT infrastructure proved to be hazardous in the set-up of
both platforms. The LCTA, for example, tried to tackle these problems by offering several
training sessions to its members - the Lithuanian farmsteads it represents. In the case of
yourGreece, one of the lessons learned was also that the company had not realised from
the start how much time and resources were needed to communicate the idea of
yourGreece to each of the member hotels and to convince them to participate.
But, as some of the case studies have shown, technology and fully automated systems
are often not sufficient for running a successful online intermediary. Both yourGreece and
Adriatica.net have realised that personal interaction is vital for operating an online
venture. This is especially true for yourGreece where technology is only used to support
personal interaction between provider and supplier. The actual interaction with customers
is still handled by an employee of yourGreece; automation merely speeds up the process
of communication between customer and provider, supports the identification of tailormade
tourism packages and enhances booking and payment procedures. Adriatica.net
made a similar experience: Originally, Adriatica.net was designed as an almost
exclusively technological undertaking, without considerable personal communication
schemes between Adriatica.net and its customers. Yet, about half of its customer base
preferred to have personal customer services supporting their search and booking
activities. Adriatica.net therefore had to expand its personal customer services to meet
these demands.
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