E-tourism in England a strategy .pdf

• To be integrated into a national TIC network to obtain advance bookings from national
and international customers.
Whilst demand may be mainly for local information, most TICs need to be able service
enquiries about other parts of their area or elsewhere in England – and therefore to have
access to the national database and to be able to communicate quickly with TICs in other
areas.
4.2.8 DMS suppliers
Destination management systems are specialised software applications which provide the
foundation for the management of destinations, enabling tourism product information to
used to support marketing and visitor services and for the provision of up-to-date data
enabling online booking. The suppliers of DMS software require a market that encourages
investment in technical improvement and adoption by DMOs not yet covered. The creation
of a national Englandnet infrastructure with open interoperability standards would enable
DMS suppliers adopting these standards to offer DMOs the added confidence of national
distribution in addition to the other competitive features of their systems.
4.2.9 Suppliers of goods and services
The suppliers of goods and services to tourism businesses are faced with the costs and
inefficiencies of dealing with a highly dispersed and diverse range of relatively small
customers. If tourism businesses had online access to supplier catalogues for product search
and price/delivery comparisons and ordering, the suppliers and procurement companies
would have wider and cheaper distribution. They may also be able to plan and provide
cheaper logistics. Enabling such a procurement service could be built into the EnglandNet
national infrastructure.
4.2.10 Suppliers of e-commerce services
The take-up of e-commerce services by tourism organisations has been hindered by the lack
of data and systems that work together. This has held back the development of e-tourism
services, which need a set of national standards to be fully effective. The consequence is
that cost economies and breadth of supply of e-commerce services have not yet been
achieved. National standards, driven by the requirements of EnglandNet will hasten the
creation and use of payment and back-office services.
4.2.11 Commercial operators not primarily involved in tourism
This category is made up of organisations and companies that are not primarily involved in
tourism but would benefit from access to tourism data, for example:
• Distribution organisations – those that could publish England product data through
their own distribution routes, for example, Internet service providers or mobile phone
companies.
• Content providers - those that could provide appropriate content to enhance the main
system, for example a train operating company.
• Data merchants - those that would pay for the use of the database content for their
own commercial purposes, for example media production companies.
• Travel goods suppliers, for example hotel furnishings suppliers.
17/44 A strategy for modernising English tourism through e-business – July 2002