Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2000 Proceedings of the International Conference in Barcelona, Spain, 2000

ENTER has now met for six years, providing a valuable forum for researchers and practitioners to discuss and debate their ideas and perspectives regarding the nature and role of tourism and information technology in global society. Over the years, the nature and rate of change in the tourism industry has been overwhelming. The internet and related technologies are now dominant agents of change and have created a "new economy" which requires new processes and strategies to replace those developed for the "old economy". The theme of ENTER 2000, "Keeping Pace with Change - New Frontiers for IT and Tourism", captures the challenges that we face at the beginning of the new millennium. The papers included in this volume illustrate the incredible growth in research and development in this area and reflect its youth, vitality and at the same time, maturation. Perhaps most important, these papers document how this new technology has changed and, in tum, how the industry has responded. The series of proceedings of which this volume is a part is creating a unique body of knowledge about the intertwined emergence of tourism and technology. There are, perhaps, three overriding themes of this congress. First is the focus on the tourist. Professor Stock's keynote address "Intelligent Interfaces for the Tourist" is a good representative of a series of papers discussing how information systems, electronic markets, and user interfaces have been or can be developed to enhance the tourist experience.

1 Keynote Address.- Intelligent interfaces for the tourist.- 2 Smart Solutions to Old Problems: Challenges for Tourist Information Systems.- DEEP MAP: challenging IT research in the framework of a tourist information system.- Meta-level programming for legacy TIS integration.- 3 Considering the Foundations for IT.- A critical analysis of tourism information technology research.- The failure of the new discipline: information technology, business process, and the control of tourism operatives.- 4 Information Systems Architecture.- Vague queries in tourism information systems.- Integrating heterogeneous tourism information in TIScover: The MIRO-Web approach.- Integration of heterogeneous information sources.- 5 Changing Tourism Information Systems.- Virtual tourist destinations: assessing their communication effectiveness with and through foreign intermediaries.- Putting the tourist into tourist information.- Intelligent museum as value creator on the tourism market: towards a new business model.- 6 Building and Maintaining Data Warehouses.- DATATUR: tourism statistics information system — the experience of Spain.- Developing a business information data warehouse for the australian tourism industry — a strategic response.- Data management in tourism: chaotic and quixotic.- 7 Building Satisfaction into Information Systems Implementation.- Tourist satisfaction based multilevel intelligent decision support system.- Cooperative techniques and tools to increase the quality of the software in tourist companies.- Desktop: how culture in an international multilocational travel organisation affects the successful implementation of technology solutions — two years on.- 8 Changing Roles: The Impacts of Information Technologies.- Service dimensions of travel distribution: an Indian case study.- The competitiveness of traditional tourist destinations in the information economy.- Industrial mapping of tourism information technologies.- 9 Developing Innovative Destination Information Systems.- Developing rural tourism destinations: implications for, and of, information systems.- The Canadian Tourism Exchange: content, collaboration, and commerce.- 10 Design of Electronic Tourism Markets.- Reference model of an electronic tourism market.- Agents solving strategic problems in tourism.- Open network for tourism (Ontour): a concept for electronic commerce in the business processes of the tourism industry.- 11 Prosumer: The Changing Role of the Consumer.- Tourists’ valuation of other tourists’ contributions to travel Web sites.- The interplay of holiday-related travel habits and the use of new information and communication technologies.- A conceptual framework for evaluating effects of a virtual tour.- 12 Developing E-Commerce Strategics.- Evaluating electronic channels of distribution in the hotel sector.- Tomorrow’s travel agency: a survey of adaptation and positioning strategics to new technologies in services.- The application of e-commerce to enhance the competitive advantages of hotels in Hong Kong.- 13 Expanding the Value Chain.- Partnership Australia’s national tourism data warehouse: preliminary assessment of a destination marketing system.- Supplements in airline cabin service.- Involving The DMO’s in a larger part of the value chain.- 14 Systems and Interface Design.- A typology of tourism related websites: its theoretical background and implications.- The diffusion and application of multimedia technologies in the tourism and hospitality industries.- Usability of information and reservations systems: theory or practice?.- 15 Empowering SMTEs and Networking.- Destination management systems and small accommodation establishments: the Irish experience.- The use of internet sites by smaller travel agencies in the Netherlands.- Internet as a destination marketing tool: a case study.- 16 Benchmarking Internet-Based Systems.- Efficiency measures in benchmarking decision support systems: a hotel industry application.- The measurement of the marketing effectiveness of the Internet in the tourism and hospitality industry.- Destination management systems: criteria for success — an exploratory research.- 17 SMTEs at the Crossroads.- Mentoring small destinations into destination management towards electronic marketing.- Small is beautiful? ICT and tourism SMEs: a comparative European survey.- Capacity to change and its influence on effective IT use.