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

Tourism
figures are considerably above the respective all-sectors average of 25%. 88 However, the
adoption of sophisticated software solutions for e-marketing is still low.
As regards accounting, almost half of all tourism companies (46%) that do not use a
sophisticated ERP system said that they use some kind of accounting software. The
discrepancy within the industry is substantial, as about twice as many travel agencies and
tour operators reported using accounting software compared to companies from the
accommodation or gastronomy sector. There is also a significant gap to other sectors
studied this year where, on average, 57% of companies said that they use some kind of
accounting software.
The level of impact is also expected to be high in the management area, indicating
expectations with regard to a further ICT-based optimisation of internal work processes.
Furthermore, a high ICT impact is anticipated for customer support processes. In contrast
to the currently perceived high influence of ICT on logistics, there are rather low
expectations for the future impact of ICT on this area of business activity.
Pronounced role of ICT for process innovations
Compared to other sectors studied by e-Business W@tch in 2006, there are no
exceptionally intensive innovation activities in tourism, neither in the product nor in the
process dimension. But, the role of ICT for process innovation (e.g. automation, flexible
re-organisation) in tourism is remarkably pronounced: almost 80% of companies which
reported process innovations in the year 2005 (19%) said that these innovations were
essentially ICT-based (see Exhibit 3-31 in chapter 3). The case studies conducted by e-
Business W@tch highlight the role of ICT as driver for process innovations in the context
of dis- and re-intermediation (see the case studies about YourGreece, Lithuanian
Countryside Tourism Association, adriatica.net, Accor Hotels in section 4.1), as well as in
the context of dynamic packaging (case studies about CSI Media, lastminute.com and
touropa.com presented in section 4.2).
Concluding assessment
Exhibit 5-6 recapitulates the assessment of the ICT and e-business impact on the
business areas presented in this sector report. The scores are not to be understood as
'exact' results of a quantitative computation, based on some model; they are tentative,
reflecting the impression that the study team gained from analysing findings from the
survey, the interviews, case studies and the literature review conducted fro this report.
This exhibit should be, therefore, regarded more as a means to trigger further debate.
88
This finding is consistent with other e-tourism studies. According to the most recent
investigation on “Trends in European Internet Distribution”, this development of online tourism
will continue to rise (cf. Marcussen 2006).
157