The Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management University of Helwan El Manial Street

Dr. Daniel R. Fesenmaier Director, National Laboratory for Tourism & eCommerce Temple University Dr. Wesal Abu Alam The Faculty of Tourism & Hotel Management University of Helwan Dr. Dohaa Mahmood Dean, The Faculty of Tourism & Hotel Management University of Helwan Dr. Amr Salama Chairman University of Helwan

Ph D Workshop

January 25, 2004 8:30 – 18:00

The Faculty of Tourism and Hotel

Management University of Helwan

El Manial Street (Next to Cairo Meridian Hotel)

PhD Workshop Schedule

ENTER2004 Cairo, Egypt

January 25, 2004 8:30 – 18:00 The Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management

University of Helwan

El Manial Street (Next to Cairo Meridian Hotel)

8:30 – 9:00 Registration – coffee 9:00 – 9:45 Welcome and Introduction to Workshop

Dr Dohaa Mahmood Dean, The Faculty of Tourism & Hotel Management University of Helwan

Dr Amr Salama Chairman University of Helwan

9:45 – 10:15 Setting the stage: Graduate research in IT

Keynote Speaker: Dr Andrew J Frew Professor/Chair of IT and Tourism Director, SITI, Faculty of Business and Arts Queen Margaret University College

10:15 – 10:45 The Application of IT on Tourism in Egypt

Keynote Speaker: Dr Raafat Radwan Chairman, IDSC

Cabinet of Ministers Gen Secretary of the Arab Information Technology Union

10:45 – 11:15 IT and the Egyptian Tourism Product

Keynote Speaker: Dr Fathy Sleh Director, Center for Documentations of Culture & Natural Heritage Cabinet of Ministers

Professor of Engineering, The University of Cairo 11:15 – 12:00 Future of IT: Areas for Research

Keynote Speaker: Dr Hannes Werthner Former President International Foundation for IT & Tourism Director, E-Commerce and Tourism Research Lab, ITC/irst Founder/President, EC3 – E-commerce Competence Center 12:00 – 13:00 Lunch Break

Match meetings between graduate students and IT companies

13:00 – 17:00 Break-out groups 17:00 – 18:00 Discussion of Learnings: General Group Discussion

List of Proposals

An Investigation of On-line Customer Perceived Value in Relationto Purchasing a Tourism

Product 3

The Co-alignment Model for the Implementation of a Strategic Information Systems – A Case Study of Virginia Beach 6

Effects of Mobile Information Provision on Tourist Experiences in Natural Parks 10

Operation and IT Service Management of a DMO’s Market Intelligence Tool 20

Assessing the Internet Marketing Strategies of Multiunit Hotels in the UK 22

Semantic Web Based Tourism Harmonisation Framework Towards an Interoperable e-Tourism Market 29

The Relationship Between Service Quality and Routinisation or Work: Communicating Specifications for Tourism Product Delivery to Personnel via Occupational Standards 33

An Investigation into Tourism Destination Image: Consumer Decision Making in Virtual and Physical Spaces 36

Persuasion vs Personalization: Preference Elicitation Processes in Destination Recommendation Systems 45

Customers’ Perceptions of Online Internet Reservation Systems 52

The Impact of Virtualised Destination Images on Online Backpacker’s Travel Destination Choice: A quantitative investigation 56

Disparities in the Adoption of Electronic Distribution Strategies by UK’s Independent Hotels in relation to its Domestic Versus Overseas Guest Ratios 64

Interactivity and Decision Making for On-Tour Travel Recommender Systems 68

Adoption and Beyond: Profiling Potential Adopters and Non-adopters Using Domain Specific Innovativeness to Identify Internet Usage among Tourists to New Zealand 74

Reference Data Model for Destination Marketing Organizations (DMO) 78

Software Engineering for Destination Marketing Organizations 82

Tourist Information Processes 84

Satisfaction in Mobile Context-Aware Information Services: the Case of the Tourism Industry 89 Distinction and lookalikes: The Search for Distinctiveness and the Construction of Regional Identity: A Web Based Approach Applied to the Tourism Destination Marketing of Zeeland, the Netherlands 94

An Investigation of On-line Customer Perceived Value

in Relationto Purchasing a Tourism Product

II Research Objectives

1 To investigate the attributes driving customers’ purchasing decisions and also whether the tourism industry delivered on its promises;

2 To identify which attributes driving customer value at the point of purchase and specify similarities and differences among the key market segments; and,

3 To provide ways to retain customers and promote customer loyalty in electronic marketplace

III Research Question

Customer perceived value is a focal construct in marketing and is often described as a key determinant of sustainable competitive advantage and superior organisational performance To attract customers to the electronic marketplace, the tourism industries will have to offer convenient and value-added services, which create the customers perceived values

VI Research Hypotheses

1 There is no statistically significant differences between online customers make their purchase decisions in terms of using internet as an information search tool;

2 There is no statistically significant differences between online customers make their purchase decisions in terms of using internet at the problem defined stage;

3 There is no statistically significant differences between online customers make their purchase decisions in terms of using internet at the evaluation stage;

4 There is no statistically significant differences between online customers make their purchase decisions in terms of using internet at the searching for alternatives stage;

5 There is no statistically significant differences between online customers make their purchase decisions in terms of using internet at the post-purchase stage; and,

6 There is no statistically significant difference between online customers perceived value

at the point of purchase a tourism product

V Methodology

This project will apply: (1) a secondary review of the literature in marketing and related disciplines, identification of particular positive aspects of the tourism industry noticed by the guests as visible sources of customer value; (2) qualitative research (a discussion of these points

in relation to the business strategies stated in the managers’ interviews as the primary reasons for their success) in order to develop hypotheses related to creating online customers’ perceived value; and (3) quantitative research (scale development, data collection) to test these hypotheses

Data Collection

Content Analysis

To identify tourism business websites, a content analysis is undertaken to study the amount of on-line reservation services and on-line value-added services offered on the websites of various tourism business would provide the vital data needed for an effective and accurate conclusion Content analysis is often defined as “any technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively identifying specified characteristics of the message” (Holsti, 1969, p.601) According

to Nachmias and Nachmias (2000), objectivity means that the analysis is undertaken on the basis

of explicit rules that make it possible for various researchers to obtain the same results when analysing the same object Content analysis is commonly used to study the characteristics of various forms of communication Websites typically communicate text and pictures about various products or businesses Content analysis, therefore, should be a reliable methodology for studying the content of websites on the Internet

On-line Customer

A mailing list of customers is acquired from a list of postcodes provided by the post office that secures the names and addresses of customers residing in Greater London area A computer generated, random sample of appropriate number of samples is drawn from the population and the self-administered questionnaire is mailed to the sample It is taken to assure that the sample proportionately represented all areas of Greater London by comparing sampled postcodes and area-wide postcodes

The initial mailing of the questionnaire is followed with two subsequent mailings to insure a greater response rate According to Dillman’s (1978) method, a reminder postcard is mailed one week after the initial mailing Two weeks after the initial mailing, a follow-up letter and an additional copy of the questionnaire is mailed to the non-respondents

IV Expected Results

The result of this research could provide the tourism Industries with strategies with which they can build well constructed and effective website In addition to theories, testing the research findings will be useful to managers for undertaking change efforts directed at creating superior value for online customers This will, in turn, enable the achievement of superior organisational performance relative to competitors through higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty

References

Dillman, D A (1978) Mail and Telephone Surveys: The Total Design Method, New York, New

York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc

Drucker, P F (1985) Innovation and Entrepreneurship, New York, Harper and Row

Holsti, O R (1969) Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities, Reading, MA,

Addison-Wesley

Marcussen, C H (1999) Internet Distribution of European Travel and Tourism Services, The

Market, Transportation, Accommodation and Package Tour, Research Centre of Bornholm, August

Marcussen, C H (1999) The Effect of Internet Distribution of Travel and Tourism Services on

the Marketing Mix: No-Frills, Fair Fares, and Fare Wars in the Air, Information

Technology and Tourism, 2, pp.197-212

Nachmias, Frankort C and Nachmias, D (2000) Research Methods in the Social Sciences, 6th

ed, New York, St Martin’s Press

Porter, Michael E (1985) Competitive Advantage, New York, Free Press

Porter, Michael E (1998) Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior

Performance, New York, Free Press

Porter, Michael E (2001) Strategy and the Internet, Harvard Business Review, March, pp 63-78 Strader, T J and Shaw, M J (1997) Characteristics of Electronic Markets, Decision Support

Systems, 21, pp.185-198

Wan, C S (2002) The Web Sites of International Tourist Hotel and Tour Wholesalers in

Taiwan, Tourism Management, 23 (2002), pp.155-160

Weeks, P and Crouch, I (1999) Sites for Score Eyes: An Analysis of Australian Tourism and

Hospitality Web Sites, Information Technology and Tourism, 2, pp.53-172

The Co-alignment Model for the Implementation of a Strategic Information Systems – A Case Study of

Virginia Beach

David Yao-Jen Chang

Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the United States

I Introduction and Research Objectives

The city of Virginia Beach is the most populous city in the Commonwealth County of the state

of Virginia and the 38th largest in the United States With more than 11,000 hotel rooms and a temperate year-round climate, this popular seaside resort is an ideal meeting destination any time

of the year It’s easy to mix business with pleasure in Virginia Beach However, the tourism structure is changing under the forces driving change in information distribution and e-commerce, which in turn is also changing the competition and makes the environment more dynamic and complex

To meet the challenges of the change, Virginia Beach has been utilizing the co-alignment model (Olsen et al., 1998) to formulate its strategic plans The co-alignment model is a strategy model that allows an organization to conceptualize its relationship with the environment in which it operates in a systematic and logical manner The model entitles a destination management organization (DMO) to cope with the difficulties posted by the environmental information The integration of information technology (IT) into the organizational fabric of the tourist destination management thus becomes an important key to success

The research proposes an integration model that attempts to synthesize the co-alignment model and information systems (IS) to meet the future challenges and aid a DMO in formulating and implementing the effective strategic plans The synthesis of the co-alignment model and IS can help develop and maintain an organization’s core competencies and further claims IT’s strategic role in the strategy formulation process The research argues that such integration perhaps is the best solution for a DMO to develop and promote its destination effectively and successfully in today’s highly dynamic, complex, and competitive environment The primary objectives of the present study are as follows:

1 Building an IS to manifest the constructs of the co-alignment model;

2 Synthesizing the co-alignment model and IS implementation to develop and maintain core competencies for the tourist destination management;

3 Utilizing the IS to enhance the information flows in the co-alignment model and further claiming the IT’s strategic role in the strategy formulation process;

4 Utilizing the IS to manage and control the information accurately and effectively for decision making process as well as to develop and accumulate the organization’s resources and capabilities; and,

5 Addressing the challenges for a strategic IT planning and implementation

II Problem Definition and Research Questions

Environmental information is a very important issue commonly recognized in the literature of the strategic management and tourism With the rapid innovation of IT, the form of digital information has made the environment more complex than ever While synthesizing IS with the co-alignment model, specific emphasis was placed on the information flows amongst the

constructs of the co-alignment model The well control or management of the information flows can help an organization recognize the causal relationships of the forces driving change in the external environment, the drivers making up each force, and the competitive methods selected by the DMO as the strategic choices The synthesis is expected to help the DMO formulate better strategic plans to compete in the complex and turbulent environment The problems are reflected

on the four research questions raised in the study:

1 What is the IS’s strategic role in the development of a tourist destination?

2 Can we construct an IS that synthesizes the concepts of the co-alignment model? i.e., Can

we use the IT applications to obtain a more reliable result for the strategic planning that is based on the co-alignment model?

3 How does the management develop core competencies by utilizing the co-alignment model and IT applications to further sustain competitive advantage?

4 What are the challenges of developing and implementing a strategic IS?

III Research Propositions

The literature review supports the idea of alignment for strategy formulation The alignment model was selected as the framework to construct an IS because the model suggests that a well alignment of its four constructs can ensure the value adding process and thus improve the management and development of the destination When the value adding process is managed, the destination image can be sustained and the risk of investment return can be minimized Constructing an IS within the context of the co-alignment principle can be in aid of processing environmental information and of achieving the competitive advantage To answer the research questions above, the following are the propositions of the study:

co-1 If the IS can process and store the tourist’s information, THEN the DMO can development and promote the destination accurately;

2 If the IS can process and store the supplier’s information, THEN the DMO can development and promote the destination accurately;

3 The IS is capable of increasing the understanding of the relationships among the forces driving change and value drivers derived from the co-alignment model;

4 Synthesizing the IS with the co-alignment model will develop and accumulate an organization’s competencies;

5 If the environmental information are processed and stored in the IS, THEN the management can implement the co-alignment model to formulate strategies in the most effective way;

6 The IS is capable of collecting and synthesizing the relative information and of reliably producing the usable information as reports for destination management and development; and,

7 If the synthesis of the co-alignment model and IS can help promote the success of a tourist destination management, THEN the strategic role of the IT application can be discovered

The IS plays an intermediate role in the research model to deal with the complex environmental information that starts the strategy formulation (i.e., the co-alignment) process It deals with the environmental information directly and converts them into usable information for management

VI Research Methodology

Given that the research questions, which are trying to answer the “why” and “how” for an observed phenomenon, the case study research method was employed in this study Of course, the case study method is also justified on the basis of the type of research question, the control an

investigator has over actual behavioral events, and the focus on contemporary versus historical phenomenon

There are three types of data were collected for the case study methodology in the study The

first types of data are the current documentation of the Virginia Beach and the studies and

findings in the information management field The second types are the information of the forces

driving change and value drivers identified from the environmental scanning conducted by the

management (e.g., the managers or the boundary spanners of the organization) The third types of

data are the competitive methods The workshop was designed for this purpose in order to

induce the participants to formulate the competitive methods within the framework of the alignment model

co-The first type of data is secondary data but the collections of the last two types of data are very conceptual and require one’s cognitive and reasoning skills Thus, in the justification of the complexity of the environmental issues, the means for collecting information is via communication established between the researcher and the objects Therefore the use of workshop would be effective for the data collection because it provides an opportunity for the management to understand the concepts of the co-alignment model and leads to identify the forces driving change in the near future of tourism

In the designing two-day visioning strategic workshop, the participants functioned in a nominal group setting led by facilitators to begin the first step in developing a strategic plan for the local tourism management office Such a strategic plan was aiming at laying out objectives that help build a vibrant community that benefits from the impacts of tourism and meets the needs of investors seeking to invest in the growth of the area The data collected will be entered, analyzed, reorganized, and stored in the designing IS for the management’s further interpretation to meet the needs of various types of users, such as managers, tourists, suppliers, investors, regulators, etc

The data stored and produced by the IS would permit the researcher to ensure the reliability and validity of the information and can be replicated for further research Furthermore, the success of the strategic IS implementation would aid the criterion validity including the predictive validity and concurrent validity in the near future

V Expected Results

The research is conducted primarily on the basis of the knowledge in the strategic management and computer science The IS design is feasible and the implementation of the study would result

in achieving and sustaining competitive advantage for an organization The benefit is twofold

and seen internally and externally Externally, for example, the benefits are creation of

distribution channels, creation of products and/or services, creation of industry leader, and

creation of barriers to enter Internally, for example, the organization will obtain the benefits on

the creation of information, creation of a knowledge network, operational advantage, improvement of induction and deduction reasoning, and creation of value-adding managers for future value-adding projects

Since the IS will be working on the algorithms provided by the co-alignment model, their synthesis will reach a coordination strategy framework for DMOs The coordination framework deals with the environmental information directly and converts them into usable information for management By integrating the co-alignment model and IS, the research would provide significant evidence for the implementation of information technology (IT) in the field of the

strategic management in the hospitality and tourism discipline and thus manifest IT’s strategic role in the information era

References

Baets, R J (1996) Some empirical evidence on IS strategy alignment in Banking, Information

and Management, 30, pp 155-177

Benbasat, Izak, Goldstein, David K & Mead, Melissa (1987, September) The case research

strategy in studies of information systems MIS Quarterly, 11(3), pp 369-386

Boynton, A C., Zmud, R W & Jacobs, G C (1994) The influence of IT management practice

on IT use in large organizations MIS Quarterly, 18(3), pp 299-306

Brown, R.M., Gatian, W & Hicks, J.O (1995) Strategic information systems and financial

performance Journal of MIS, 11(4), pp 215-248

Cathoth, P.K (2002) Co-alignment between Environment Risks, Corporate Strategy, Capital

Structure, and Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation of Restaurant Firms

Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia

Cho, W (1996) A case study: creating and sustaining competitive advantage through an

informational technology application in the lodging industry Unpublished doctoral

dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia

Fodness, D & Murray, B (1997) Tourist information search Annals of Tourism Research,

24(3), pp 503-523

Ives, B & Learmonth, G P (December 1984) The information system as a competitive weapon

Communications of the ACM 27, pp 1193-1204

King, W & Teo, T (1997) Integrating between business planning and information systems

planning: validating a stage hypothesis Decision Sciences, 28(2), pp 279-308

Laws, E (1995) Tourist Destination Management, London, England: Routledge

Mata, F.J., Fuerst, W.L & Barney, J.B (1995) Information technology and sustained

competitive advantage: a resource-based analysis MIS Quarterly, 19(December), pp

487-505

Olsen M.D.,West, J & Tse, E.C (1998) Strategic Management in the Hospitality Industry, 2nd

ed New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Segars, A H & Grover, V (1998) Strategic information systems planning success: an

investigation of the construct and its measurement MIS Quarterly, 22(June), pp 139-163 Sheldon, P.J (1997) The tourism information technology Wallingford, Oxon, U.K.: CAB

International

Stabler, M.J (1990) The image of destination regions: Theoretical and empirical aspects in B

Goodall and G Ashworth (Eds.) Marketing in the Tourism Industry: The Promotion of Destination Regions London: Routledge

Taylor, M.H (2002) A Test of the Co-alignment Principle in Independent Hotels: A Case Study

Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,

Blacksburg, Virginia

Uysal, M., Chen, J.S., & Williams, D.R (2000) Increasing state market share through a regional

positing Tourism Management, 21, pp 89-96

Werthner, H & Klein, S (1999) Information Technology and Tourism – A Challenging

Relationship New York, NY: Springer-Verlag Wien

Yin, R K (1994) Case study research: Design and methods Newbury Park, CA:Sage

Publications

Effects of Mobile Information Provision on Tourist

Experiences in Natural Parks

Eduardo Simão Dias

Spatial Economics Group Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands

Henk J Scholten

Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands

Euro Beinat

SPINlab - Spatial Information Laboratory

Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands

I Introduction

Recent years have witnessed a change from the passive, low key use of rural areas for recreation

to the explosion of tourism as a highly active and dominant agent of change and control in the countryside and associated rural communities (Butler et al, 1998) Parks have played a significant role as tourist attractions in many countries since their establishment in the nineteenth century In some countries they are the major set of tourist attractions and the foundation of small but often important tourism industries Despite this, the relationship between tourism and national parks is not always a satisfactory one, and there is often considerable opposition to the continuance, and particularly expansion of, tourism in many national parks (Butler and Boyd, 1998) At a time when protected and recreation areas are under extreme pressures from the sheer weight of visitor numbers, mobile information services are looked as a possible “instrument” to encourage that the visitors and tourists make eco-friendly and safe use of the environment Mobile information Services can make it possible for more people to achieve full awareness of the richness of natural and cultural resources, since their mobile device will be capable of offering information about the places they visit

Alongside the “Protection of Nature” and “Research”, national parks play an increasingly important role in the passing on of knowledge (Figure 1) The National Parks provide a wide range of information, thereby helping visitors to have a wider understanding of our environment (SNP, 2002) Most of the people do not achieve full awareness of the richness of the natural and cultural resources they visit Previous tourism research in protected areas has showed that current Park visitors have information needs/questions during their visit (Abderhalden et al, 2002) The questions can be related to environmental information, like the name of a plant or the behaviour

of an animal, or practical information, like can I make a picnic here or, how many hours left to walk to the peak A number of these information requests are dependent on where the visitors are (Abderhalden et al, 2002) Managers of natural areas are looking into new digital means of Information provision, searching for a way to improve the overall tourist experience Examples

of adoptions of such digital means are the recent publications of CD-ROMs and increasing availability of official Natural Areas websites These new ways of providing dynamic and updated information to the visitors fall short in satisfying the visitor’s questions when it’s most important: out on the field during the visit

1) 2)

Figure 1 Tourists assessing a conventional analogue information delivery mean: an information board

Although boards are a form of location-based information system it is not environmentally viable to spread such a solution around the all park Consequently they are not ubiquitous

Figure 2 Example of an ubiquitous Mobile Information Service in Natural Areas (Source: WebPark)

Developments in recent years have showed that Mobile Technology is becoming increasingly available and its usage is nowadays widespread (Barnes, 2002) Therefore, mobile Internet devices with geo-location capabilities (see example on Figure 2) may create the opportunity of meeting the present information needs of visitors to natural areas Technology can enable the concept of overlaying the real world with the digital world of information and create mutual added value, both for the Individual visitor and for the Natural Park Area managers

Natural areas are open for visits because of two main reasons, the area managers consider the

visits a way of providing citizens with a leisure experience and an opportunity for increasing

environmental awareness through environmental education Leisure: According to the Alps

Network for Protected Areas (NAZ, 2002), a certain number of protected areas were set up exclusively for leisure Their purpose is to preserve an area with certain characteristics and of particular beauty and to make it available for people’s leisure activities, but it is not intended to develop physical infrastructure (e.g roads, hotels) for this leisure goal It should be noted, that this “leisure function” is also found on protected areas that have other purposes as well The protected area types, that are meant here, are in general classified as IUCN category V (IUCN, 1994) But most of the other Areas, who have been classified with stricter categories (e.g National Parks) also have “leisure” as a goal, although not the main goal which is usually protection, but as a secondary goal (NAZ, 2002) Environmental Awareness: Another main goal shared by most of the Official Protected/Natural areas is environmental education (see an example of an conventional environmental education mechanism on Figure 1) Environmental education is a learning process that increases people’s knowledge and awareness about the environment and associated challenges, develops the necessary skills and expertise to address the challenges, and fosters attitudes, motivations, and commitments to make informed decisions and take responsible action (UNESCO, 1978) Natural Park managers employ environmental

education as a method to increase the environmental awareness of their visitors Environmental

Awareness is defined as a combination of motivation, knowledge and skills (Partanen-Hertell,

1999) The high level of environmental awareness enables conscious choices for acting in an environmentally friendly way When the environmental awareness of an individual is combined with external stimulating physical and practical conditions, the result can be a desire and will to make environmentally friendly choices (Partanen-Hertell, 1999)

Mobile Location-based information services (can make a difference in addressing these goals of the park Managers, they can provide the right environmental information at the right time (where

it is most needed, out on the field), contributing to the environmental awareness of the visitors

And because the system allows the visitor to enjoy more the trip (displaying what to see around his location) and displaying the visitor’s position a map (avoiding getting lost) it’s expected the visitor to have a better experience at the leisure level

This research framework intends to contribute in evaluating the effect of mobile location-based information services in addressing the leisure and environmental education goals of the Natural Park managers by measuring the visitor’s perceived enjoyment and environmental awareness and comparing with when using conventional information means

II Research Model

Up to recently, natural areas visitors could only access information through static sources as books, leaflets, maps and other paper-based sources But today, the availability of mobile Internet devices with geo-location capabilities allows the delivery (during the visit) of dynamic information that is dependent on the tourist position The focus of this study is in assessing the added value of using Location-based information in addressing the ludic-didactic goal of both Natural Areas managers and visitors, by comparison with using “conventional” information means sources

Figure 3 displays the research model In summary, it is expected that the way people access

information has an effect on the visitor’s reaction, particularly on the visitors perceived

enjoyment and environmental awareness

Figure 3 Research model: The Model illustrates the relationship of the different tourism information mechanism with the tourist experience

The model suggests several interactions that constitute the hypothesis for this research work:

1 The degree of mobile informaiton provision positively influences perceived enjoyment of the park visitor;

2 The degree of mobile informaiton provision positively influences environmental awareness;

3 Degree of mobile informaiton provision on enjoyment depends on the extent to which the informaiton is location-specific; and,

4 The degree of mobile informaiton provision on environmental awareness depends on the extent to which the information is location-specific

Conventional vs.

Technologic

Perceived Enjoyment

Post Environmental Awareness

Environmental Awareness

Pre-Location-based vs.

Non-location-based

These hypotheses will be tested in an experimental Framework, described in the chapter Method

Dependent Variables

In an experiment or study, the dependent variable is the observed variable whose changes are determined by the presence or degree of one or more independent variable In this study, the

dependent variables are related to the tourist experience Tourist experience is defined, in the

scope of this study, within the Natural Area Managers context which integrates two components:

the environmental awareness and the perceived enjoyment The environmental awareness is

defined as a combination of motivation, knowledge and skills The high level of environmental awareness enables conscious choices for acting in an environmentally friendly way When the environmental awareness of an individual is combined with external stimulating physical and practical conditions, the result can be a desire and will to make environmentally friendly choices

(Partanen-Hertell, 1999) A priori, the environmental awareness measurement after the visit to the park is dependent not just on the visit, but also on the environmental awareness level the

tourist has before the visit (the research model copes with this assumption by linking the post environmental awareness not only to the information provision, but also to the environmental awareness level prior to the visit see

Figure 3) For this reason it’s necessary to measure the environmental awareness level of the

tourist also before undertaking the tests The intention is not to measure the absolute value by itself, but the increment (or any changes) in relation with the pre-visit levels

The perception of enjoyment while visiting the park: the parks are also important leisure areas

and essential getaways for the increasing stressful urban living

Conventional delivery is defined as the static information sources as books, leaflets, paper maps

and other equivalent analogue sources (information that does not have a technological support

infrastructure) Technological delivery is defined as the digital format information provided in a

technological support infrastructure as a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)1 (see Figure 2, Figure

6, and Figure 7) Location specific information is information, which is linked to a specific

position in the real world When the visitor is searching for the answers to his questions, only the geographic relevant information is provided This type of information can only be delivered via a

technological delivery mechanism, a mobile device with geo-location capabilities Non-localised

information is information that is not linked to real world places, therefore it cannot be filtered

using the location, it is provided as is

How do the Independent Variables influence the Dependent Variables?

Information is acknowledged to have influence on the human behaviour It is expected that the tourists can access the required information more easily and efficiently when using a

technological and location aware delivery mechanism and that it translates to a increasing of the

1 PDA: Personal Digital Assistant, electronic handheld information device that enables you to store and retrieve data and information in a digital form (see more at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile)

perceived enjoyment Using a ubiquitous mobile information system, the environmental awareness is expected to increase when visitors can have access to information in situ, as the

importance of specific animals in the ecological system

III Methodology

The preferred method for exploring this topic is the experimental approach Experiments have proven to be useful to study attitudes and behaviour in an isolated fashion When the independent variables are well controlled and manipulated it’s reliable to evaluate the hypothesised effects The experimental approach is one of the strongest and most rigorous methods available in Information Systems research The chronological span of the predicted test activities is represented in Figure 4

Figure 4 Time span of the predicted test activities, which will last a total of 110 minutes

The testing protocol has not been defined in detail, but it’s intended to test the treatments of

conventional/technological information provision mechanism and localised/non-localised

information content and evaluate the effects on the dependent variables through debriefing questionnaires (see Table 1 for a graphical overview)

Content Delivery

Mechanism

Non-location based Location based Conventional Control Group n/a

Technological Test group #1 Test group #2

Table 1 Experiment design, division of subjects among the groups

The control group is composed by subjects that only have access to the conventional information provision mechanism that implies non-localised information content The results of the

debriefing questionnaires will be compared with the two test groups: Test group #1 will have access to a mobile information system, deployed on a PDA but without location awareness; Test group #2 will have access to a location aware technological information provision mechanism The mobile information system is described on the chapter “Mobile Information System”

Mobile Information System

The Mobile Information System is in development under the WebPark framework WebPark is a research and development project funded by the European Commission that tries to develop a series of services for users of recreational and/or protected areas The service is based on wireless technology and will be tested for mobile phones and PDA’s Several personalized Location Based Services will be developed within the WebPark framework The services are built upon existing information currently delivered to tourists and professional users of recreation and protected areas via CD, kiosk and web It enables users to request information from several databases from their mobile phone or PDA and filtering the information based on location, time and user profile relevance The kind of online information users could expect are: flora and fauna

Welcoming

The Visitors

Pre-test on Environmental awareness

Explaining

Post-test survey

description linked to the habitat the tourist is visiting, routes and tracks, hotels and restaurants close to the visitor, positioning of oneself, and more

The project development cycles are almost finished (until July 2004) and the main result will be the delivery of a platform that allows the deployment of location-based services for protected/Natural areas that requires just some source content adaptation To the present date, some interim results have been obtained via the development of Location Based-services for two study areas: The Wadden Sea Islands, the Netherlands and the Swiss National Park, Switzerland For these two areas, a specific prototype has been developed and tested with real visitors See Figure 5, Figure 6 and Figure 7 for details and look of the current Mobile Information system

Figure 5.Testers on the rain during a technical and functional test of the system performed at the Wadden Sea, Netherlands in October 2003

Figure 6.Detail of the Mobile Information System Topographic Map with user location (via GPS signal) for navigation purposes

Figure 7.Detail of the Mobile Information System A tourist accessing Multimedia and text description about

a bird

Some technical specifications of the system are (WebPark, 2003-a):

• Runs on any PDA with PocketPC20022 operating system (or higher);

• Web based via wireless internet (GPRS3 or UMTS4);

• Operates also locally with stored data when not connect to the Internet; and,

• Position obtained from GPS5 via Bluetooth6 wireless connection to the PDA

The architecture of the system is graphically represented in Figure 8 It is important to refer three issues/constrains that the service architecture allows to cope with 1) Since the user is mobile, the communication with the services is wireless (has been tested with GPRS); 2) Since the user is mobile and pedestrian, the devices used are palm-sized, the services can rely only on limited resources and computing power from the user terminal; and, 3) the type of areas targeted by WebPark services is Natural Areas, which means partial coverage for wireless communication

To cope with this partial coverage condition, the WebPark services do not rely on fulltime permanent connection, not even on constant bandwidth

2 PocketPC is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/products/pocketpc/default.mspx)

3 GPRS: General Packet Radio Service

4 UMTS: Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

5 GPS: Global Positioning System is a worldwide radio-navigation system formed from a constellation of 24 satellites and their ground stations (source: http://www.trimble.com/gps/what.html)

6 Bluetooth® wireless technology enables connections between devices through specific radio frequencies (official website:

http://www.bluetooth.com/)

Figure 8 Graphical display of the Mobile Information System architecture

This technical set-up allows the deployment wireless services in Natural areas A prototype was developed under the framework of the project that includes the following features:

• Visitor self position on a digital topographic map;

• Search for tourist points of interest (POI) as hotels, restaurants, bike rentals, etc (around the position or in all the park);

• Access species information (fauna and flora): description and multimedia data;

• Species can be sorted by habitat closeness to the visitor (location filter for easier identification);

• Visualize accessed information on a map (information like the location of a POI or the location of the habitat of an animal); and,

• Insert location based comments (e.g animal spotting, parking place) These comments can be public (shared on-line with other visitors)

The system is still under development and it’s expected that by the end of the project more advanced features will be available as: intelligent agents that help on the user interaction and knowledge discovery components that build answers based on the visitor’s previous geographic patterns But, for the purpose of this study, the already developed basic features are enough to

evaluate the effects of technology and location when used to provide information for the visitors

The topics described on the “current prototype possibilities” are obviously dependent on the data availability for a certain area The tests performed until now on the study areas were merely at a technical and functional level and no protocol was developed for user acceptance or user behaviour analysis The tests were designed to get insight on the user needs regarding functionality and to test the system in both reliability and speed on “real world” situations Nevertheless, these tests provided valuable insight on the user handling and feeling about the system and encouraged the present research on the evaluation of the Mobile Information system

at an efficiency level for the goals of the Park Managers/Visitors (environmental

education/awareness and leisure/perceived enjoyment)

Experimental Task

To evaluate the differences between the groups described on Table 2, a set of tasks will be defined in detail The task to complete by the subjects is still in development stage and a description will only be finalised after a pre-test with a smaller group of visitors Still, it is expected to have ready for testing tasks that depend on the provision of information and reflect

Pricing engine

Smart Cache folders

Tiny Local HTTP

WMS

Databases

GPS

Bluetooth connection GPRS connection

the environmental awareness of the visitor The experiments are planned to take place in the

Wadden Sea island of Texel in collaboration with the Ecomare Ecomare is a Museum and

Information Centre for the Wadden Sea who is interested in the outcomes of this research and

have easy access to the visitors to the protected area

Task Type

Navigate to predetermined animal spotting sites navigation

Identify the endangered category the animals belong to Extra-information

Table 2 Possible task descriptions and types

The PDA and information contents should be available all time during the experimentation for

orientation on the terrain, since the user is requested to travel by bike there was a problem of

handling/consulting the system while biking This issue was solved by using a holder like in

Figure 9

Figure 9 IPAQ holder for the Bicycle

Participants

The test persons will be a group of visitors to the Ecomare museum (centre for centre for the

Wadden and North Sea on Texel) who are persuaded to take part on the experiment via the

incentive of receiving a free entrance to the Ecomare Museum

Data collection and Analysis

After the tests, each subject from every group will be submitted to a debriefing questionnaire

The dependent variables that will be measured are the environmental awareness and perceived

enjoyment which are directly linked to the education and leisure goals of the Park Managers A

possible approach for measuring and analysing environmental awareness in an individual, a

group or a society is based on investigating the three elements of environmental awareness – motivation, knowledge and skills – by interviews, questionnaires and tests among individuals (Partanen-Hertell, 1999) The questionnaire for determining environmental awareness still has to

be defined in detail, but there is literature that serves as guidelines for such activities Hertell, 1999, Kreft-Burman, 2002)

(Partanen-For the leisure/perceived enjoyment dimension, the hedonic value of the visit should be

measured It is proposed to use the hedonic scale reported in Spangenberg, Voss & Crowley (1997) Choosing the correct scale is very important The proposed scale is present in the Handbook of Marketing Scales (Bearden and Netmeyer, 1999) a document which is frequently used for marketing research to design academic questionnaires (van der Heijden, 2002) The scale addresses the hedonic component of attitude and, according to its developers, it’s a generally applicable scale After conducting the experiment the hedonic scale is administered to the participants after task completion as a questionnaire the authors The debriefing and measurement questionnaires still have to be defined in detail

The analysis of the data will be through Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) MANCOVA is a more sensitive test at assessing differences between groups than MANOVA because it uses an independent variable to help check the similarity of the groups being compared The relationship between MANOVA and MANCOVA is directly equivalent to that between ANOVA and Analysis of Covariance (or Regression Analysis) MANOVA/MANCOVA procedure: the General Linear Model Multivariate procedure provides regression analysis and analysis of variance for multiple dependent variables by one or more factor variables or covariates The factor variables divide the population into groups Using this general linear model procedure, null hypotheses can be tested about the effects of factor variables on the means of various groupings of a joint distribution of dependent variables Interactions between factors as well as the effects of individual factors can be investigated In addition, the effects of covariates and covariate interactions with factors can be included For regression analysis, the independent (predictor) variables are specified as covariates (SPSS, 2000)

References

Abderhalden, W D., E, Haller, R,.Krug, K.& Mountain, D (2002) Analysis and Definition of

User Needs, WebPark Consortium: 50

Barnes, S J (2002) The mobile commerce value chain: analysis and future developments

International Journal of Information Management, 22, pp 91-108

Bearden, W O and Netemeyer, R G (1999) Handbook of Marketing Scales: Multi-Item

Measures for Marketing and consumer behavior Research, Sage Publication

Butler, R W., Hall, C Michael, Jenkins, John (1998) Tourism and Recreation in Rural Areas,

WileyEurope

Butler, R., Boyd, S (2000) Tourism and National Parks: Issues and Implications, WileyEurope EcoMare (2001) De vleet: Encyclopedie over de Nordzee het waddengebied en de kust,

Ecomare Texel, Nederlands

Van der Heijden, H., & Sorensen, L S (2002) Measuring attitudes towards mobile information

services, an empirical validation of the HED/UT scale (working paper) Copenhagen

Business School: 16

Kreft-Burman, K (2002) Raising environmental awareness in the Baltic Sea area: results and

experience gained from the SPA Project International Journal Environment and

Sustainable Development, 1(1), pp 88-96

Partanen-Hertell, M., Harju-Autti, P., Kreft-Burman, K & Pemberton, D., (1999) Raising

Environmental Awareness in the Baltic Sea Helsinki, The Finnish Environment Institute:

107

Rhin, C (2003) Web Portal Design report Toulouse, WebPark Consortium: 118

SNP (2000) DiBis, Interactive CD_ROM, Swiss National Park

SNP (2003) Aims of the National Park Retrieved online (November 11, 2003):

http://www.nationalpark.ch

Spangenberg, E R., Voss, K E & Crowley, A E (1997) Measuring the hedonic and utilitarian

dimensions of attitude: a generally applicable scale Advances in Research, 24, pp

235-241

SPSS (2000) SPSS for Windows Help system release 10.1.0, SPSS Inc

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Environmental Education Organized by UNESCO in cooperation with UNEP, Tbilisi,

USSR, pp 14-26, October 1977 Connect 3, no 1 (1978)

WebPark (2003-a), Technological Implementation Plan, EC deliverable, WebPark Consortium

Operation and IT Service Management of a DMO’s

Market Intelligence Tool

II Research Hypotheses

Our hypothesis was to find a solution to manage an IT development, support and an operation at

a professional high sophisticated level

III Methodology

The review of literature showed that very little research had been done in the field IT Service Management in the sense of an integrated solution with the elements Help-Desk, Problem Solution, Changes of the environment and the sole software application, the management of the operation and the customer orientated controlling of the promised reliability A further review of activities in this field reviled initiatives of the public sector, started by the British government in the late 1980’s to develop a framework to use given funds in an economical and appropriate way This Framework, the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) became the de facto standard in Service Management ITIL documents an Industry best practice standard guide with user focused elements service support und the customers management orientated service delivery The service delivery consists of the function of the service-desk serving user’s problems, needs and incidents, the incident management and problem management to further investigate incoming problems and incidents The change management controls all changes of the Mint IT Services and the IT Infrastructure by specific processes to secure ongoing service quality The release management uses methods of the project management to implement the changes commenced the preliminary change management

The customer orientated service delivery serves the relation to the customer by the processes of the Service Level Management beginning with the determination of necessary services, needed reliabilities, customer support and service performance and the surveillance of the fulfilment of these parts of the Service Level Agreement The availability management is used as a tool to monitor the systems availability and to commence given actions if a system or a specific service fails, for example to inform the systems administrator The capability is used to assure that the given system is able to handle the contracted service level and to proactively inform if systems components need upgrades to assure the required service quality The Continuity management

serves as the process to assure quick service resumption in the case of system failures or the loss

of critical data

VI Expected Results

The expected result of this research project is a Mint specific Service Management Environment

to integrate the ITIL best practice examples with a special designed toolset and procedures to try

to assure best service quality for the Mint users and research partner

Assessing the Internet Marketing Strategies of

Multiunit Hotels in the UK

Mohamed Tawfik Essawy

School of Tourism and Hospitality Management Leeds Metropolitan University, UK

Generally, the internet helps firms to build relationships by transcending communication barriers and establishing dialogues directly with current and prospected customers Gronroos (2000) argue that the “relational dialogue” developed through the online interactive communication process enables firms and customers to reason together and eventually develop a knowledge platform By effectively managing this platform, firms can identify individual buyers' needs and preferences, thereby leading to the development of tailor made products If this does occur and each customer has a unique profile with a certain firm, then each customer effectively becomes a segment in his or her own right

Given this interactive and customisation nature, the internet provides a win – win platform for firms and customers alike via the provision of value exchange relationships This means, according to Allen et al (1998), getting something of value from customers and users (e.g., loyal and profitable relationship) by giving them something of equivalent value (e.g., personalised attention) Therefore, a web site should not be viewed only as an online channel for disseminating information about services and products, but as a mechanism for continuously managing a personal one–to-one relationship with each customer rather than with an aggregate market segment (Varey 2002)

II Rationale of This Research

In the hotel business, many authors proclaim that building strong relationships with customers is

a crucial issue because of the high intangibility, risks, variations of product and service qualities and the highly differentiated needs of customers Meanwhile, Sigala (2001) advocates the importance of effective online customer relationship strategy due to the transparency of the virtual market This means that customers can compare online features (e.g convenience, security, privacy and prices) among different sites easily, since suppliers are only a click away

In line with this point of view, Forrester research studied how poor site management can mitigate any gains of attracting, engaging, retaining, and learning about customers' preferences The

results of their research indicate that when consumers can not find an item on a web site, approximately 50% will leave If customers have a negative experience on the first visit, 40 % will not come back (kim et al 2003) These results focus the light on the possible significant consequences from a poorly managed web site Indeed, an online relationship cannot be developed with customers who fail to interact with the site

Therefore, creating an online strategy that successfully nurtures and maintains long-term relationships with customers is one of the great challenges faced by most hotels In order to foster and strengthen the loyalty of regular and prospected customers, different value binding strategies are required Gronroos (2001) justifies that “value is considered to be an important constituent of relationship marketing, and the ability of a company to provide superior value to its customers is regarded as one of the most successful strategies” Park and Kim (2003) support this view and stress that offering value added services that bond customers to a certain web site and increase their switching costs are recognized as factors that decide success or failure of companies

Moreover, Gronroos (2001) presumes that initiating successful value binding strategies should be based on realistic perceptions of sellers and competencies of buyers He further explains that in some situations customers are not in a relational mode or the relational strategy cannot be justified from an economic standpoint, so it may be more profitable and suitable to adopt a transactional marketing strategy Gilbert and Powell-Perry (2002) express a similar view by affirming that the development of an online relationship-marketing strategy depends upon customers’ demand, the hotel companies' willingness to let their web sites assume a bigger marketing role, and the available technology

In the meantime, hotel groups are focusing on the transactional advantages of the internet, and contend that the internet has increased most of their profit indicators (Armijos et al 2002, Gregory and Breiter 2001) Most hotel chains provide online reservations, slightly secured payment facilities, (O'Connor and Horam 2001, O'Connor 2002) sales promotions, loyalty programs, and discounts (Bai et al 2003, Luck and Lancaster 2003) for increasing their transactional capabilities But they have not yet developed into the most promising stage of internet exploitation; that of one to one marketing At present, hotel chains do not allow for the customization of their products, promotions, and web pages based on their customers’ profiles

In addition, they do not apply online communities nor adopt dynamic pricing (Bai et al 2003, Jeong 2002, Murphy et al 1996) Accordingly, hotel chains lag behind the initiation of structural and social value binding strategies

On the other hand, a high proportion of internet users surf the internet in order to search for and obtain information only (Lang 2000, Legoherel et al 2000), however, these same users are not reluctant to buy online (Graeupl and McCabe 2003, Morgan et al 2001) Therefore, effective internet marketing strategies that can engage users and turn lookers into bookers are required Day (2000) states that internet users could be attracted to enter into relationships with firms if they realize some benefits and values in so doing Lin et al (2003) go one step further and empirically posit that initiating one or several types of economical, social and structural bonds that appeal to customers could engage customers and keep them loyal with a certain web site

Therefore, hotels need a framework that can bridge the gap between simply connecting to the web and harnessing its power for competitive advantages Actually, limited studies have reviewed how e-marketing can marry the needs of customers with internet technology so that web sites can become the greatest marketing assets for hotels To this end, this research will

assess the internet marketing strategies of multiunit hotels operating in the UK through a systematic framework Since, Kamdampully and Dubby (1999) conclude that the failure of most relationship marketing strategies was due to the lack of strategic planning

Hence, the framework emanates from the major criteria of an effective strategy Firstly, an effective strategy is concerned with the planning and the long-term survival and success of a business; it defines the direction for a firm; it specifies where the business is going and determines how it will get there (Davis and Brooks 1989) Accordingly, the research process entails a mechanism for identifying the direction of hotel groups in the pursuit of internet marketing To address this point, qualitative semi-structured interviews with marketing executives that ascertain their hotel groups' approaches and challenges for building, maintaining and enhancing long-term customer relationships with different segments (i.e individual customers and travel agencies) in the virtual market were conducted

Secondly, an effective strategy is concerned with the acquisition of a competitive advantage, which is a result of appropriately selected strategic issues (Davis and Brooks 1989) Yet, this study investigates customers’ perceptions towards a pool of items related to the various value binding strategies (i.e., economical, social, structural bonds) To explore the influence of these bonds on relationship building, focus group interviews with individual users and qualitative semi-structured interviews with executives in travel agencies are performed Luck and Lancaster (2003) justifies that in depth understanding of customers' needs is the first step that leads to effective relational strategy Additionally, Kelley et al (2003) affirm that ignoring online customers' preferences seriously undermine any relationship strategy Finally, the analysis of data from the focus groups and semi-structured interviews informed the last stage This stage involves follow up interviews with hotel executives in order to discuss customers’ needs and the

possibilities and challenges to fulfill their aims in the virtual market

III Scope of This Research

The research sheds the light on the strategic planning and the activities implemented by multiunit hotels operating in the UK to pursue effective online relationship marketing strategies Multiunit hotels are addressed because they operate under a system of decision making permitting coherent policies and a common strategy through one or more decision-making centers Hence, their policies to build relationships are linked

The study assesses the internet marketing strategies disseminated via PCs only So, internet marketing strategies launched through mobile telephones and interactive digital televisions are beyond the scope of this research The study focuses on PCs due to their spread and the barriers

of high cost and the limited technical capabilities (small screens, limited memory capacities) associated with the devices of the second generation of mobile phones Probably these problems will be solved with the third generation of mobile phones and new digital televisions, but these devices are still not available to a broad population Finally, the study is not concerned with the relationship management process between employees and guests during their stay in hotels

VI Research Questions and Objectives

This study is concerned with three main questions:

1 How effective is an internet mediated interaction fostering relationship with customers?

2 How do multiunit hotels manage online relationship marketing strategies?

3 What portfolio of online relationship marketing strategies yields the best competitive advantage in the hotel business?

The following objectives are developed in an attempt to answer the research questions

The objectives of this study are to:

1 Review the theory of internet and one-to-one relationship marketing, and its current implementation in the hotel industry;

2 Investigate the strategic planning of hotel groups in terms of online relationship marketing, their perceptions, trends, challenges and motives; and,

3 Explore the influence of the different value binding strategies (i.e economical, social, and structural bonds) on the loyalty and commitment of online hotel customers

These objectives are carried out by using multiple research methods: in depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with hotel marketing executives, focus groups interviews with online customers, and finally follow-up interviews with hotel mangers in order to clarify results A figure 1 illustrates the route map of the research process

V Contributions of This Study

The study will contribute to internet marketing knowledge by providing a systematic approach for analysing and classifying hotel-related internet marketing strategies A framework for effective internet marketing strategies unique to the hotel industry will be offered, which identifies the strategic issues necessary for achieving a competitive advantage

Figure 1 The Route Map of the Research Process

• Scope of the research

• Research questions and objectives

• Research structure

Review of the related literature (chapters 2& 3):

• The convergence between

relationship marketing and the internet

• The balance of power between

buyers and sellers in the virtual hotel market

The research strategy (Chapter 4):

• In depth qualitative interviews with hotel marketing executives

• Focus group interviews with individual users of hotel web sites

• In depth qualitative interviews with executives in travel agencies

• Follow up interviews with hotel executives to clarify results

Results and analysis (Chapter 5& 6):

Discussions

Conclusions and recommendations (Chapter 8)

Review of literature:

• Idea generation

• Writing the research proposal

• Registration for the PhD

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Semantic Web Based Tourism Harmonisation Framework Towards an Interoperable e-Tourism

Market

Oliver Fodor (oliver.fodor@ec3.at)

E-Commerce Competence Center, Austria;

eCommerce and Tourism Research Laboratory, ITC-irst, Italy

I Problem Definition

Online transactions are rapidly increasing in the travel and tourism industry, this industry is the leading application in the b2c arena Travel and tourism is witnessing an acceptance of e-commerce to the extent that the structure of the industry and the way business is conducted is changing The Internet is used not only for information gathering; there is an obvious acceptance

of ordering services over the World Wide Web User are becoming their own travel agents and building their travel packages themselves In the year 2002 European online bookings increased

by 53 percent, accounting for about 3,5 % of all consumer spending in this domain, whereas in the US this number is about 14 % (according to the Danish Center for Regional and Tourism Research) 64 Mio Americans researched their travel options online; and 32 percent of US travelers have used the Internet to book travel arrangements (Travel Industry Association of America, 2003) Forecasts state that by 2007 30% of all transactions in the European tourism domain will be done via the Internet, at least in the German speaking countries (Schuster, 1998)

At the same time the industry is very heterogeneous, with most of the players being SMEs (Small and Medium sized Enterprises) In consequence, from an IT perspective, this domain is characterized by a large set of different information systems, with different scopes, basic technologies and architectures as well as information structures This leads to the interoperability issue, which represents a major barrier for the rapidly emerging e-market place, with specific impact on smaller players In addition, the growing heterogeneity of the Web implies that no single player has enough power to impose one single accepted standard for business interactions

in the tourism domain In the past, many attempts have been made to propose and to implement such a standard In the 80s this was successful to some extent with the dominant role of CRS/GDS (Computerized Reservation Systems / Global Distribution Systems) such as Sabre or Amadeus, where those systems had the market position to directly integrate tour operators or travel agents But those approaches never succeeded in integrating all players, mainly due to their low flexibility and high cost unacceptable for small players Thus, the intended broad coverage has never been reached, which is now even more difficult with the Web

II Research Hypothesis

The major obstacle in the effort to establish an interoperable e-tourism marketplace is the heterogeneity which leads to its fragmentation Heterogeneity can be identified in all aspects of

an electronic tourism interaction: the players have different cultural backgrounds, follow different business models, implement systems using different platforms, have data represented in different formats On the other hand, heterogeneity if seen as diversity, counts to the fundamental arguments for the success of a tourism product, where its uniqueness and novelty are of specific importance, making the offered service more attractive This paradox, rather specific for the tourism domain, makes a potential solution to the interoperability problem even harder to achieve, calling for a sophisticated approach where the diversity remains preserved and heterogeneity shall be treated to an extent allowing an interoperable e-market to take place This indicates one of the cornerstones of our work: to handle heterogeneity as natural and given, and

to look for a solution enabling bridging between different worlds, without imposing them any changes leading to their alignment

As a fundamental prerequisite in achieving an interoperable universe, a social consensus should

be considered in the first place, establishing the ground for the remaining aspects of a successful interaction between systems Before any reasonable machine-to-machine interaction can take place, people must be aware of their need to co-operate, identify their motivations for such cooperation, and, discover the meeting points between each-others’ motivations to build on However, such a social process can be rather a lengthy one, bringing up the cultural diversity of participating players Therefore a flexible interface to the technical solution should be present, allowing dynamic configuration of bridges between the systems, enabling to set-up different topologies for interactions as well as shifting the level of coupling from weak data exchange to tight business process sharing Thus, the proposed harmonisation framework will reflect the philosophy of two lined processes, where social consensus drives the technical solution leading

to a flexible networked reality Obviously, the constantly evolving technologies will be dynamically put into play, enabling new configurations, allowing users to alter their requirements and expectations This process shall be envisioned in our solution, enabling future extensions and improvements

Leading from the social background, suitable means for projecting the human perception of the world onto the system level shall be involved in the harmonisation solution This problem has been present in different IT areas, like e.g software engineering, databases, knowledge based systems, where semantic models play an important role at the interface between human thinking and machine capabilities Nowadays, semantic models are gaining importance in the World Wide Web arena, where heterogeneity accumulates in all its forms The new generation of World Wide Web, the Semantic Web, envisions a world full of meaningful data where machines are capable

of processing semantic descriptions of data, converting these into information Ontologies (Fensel, 2001), occupying the key position in the Semantic Web, offer the capability to represent

a shared conceptualization of a domain in a human and machine understandable way The based nature and the position at the interface between human and machine makes Ontologies a hot candidate for the harmonisation effort, as the central element of the process, not forcing any changes in the diversity of the systems, but allowing to express the meaning of local heterogeneous data, protocols and business processes

web-III Methodology

Starting in 2002, the initial phase of my work concentrated at an identification of the primary requirements of the tourism market with respect to the interoperability issue This intention was mainly driven by the need to evaluate the motivating theoretical insights in practice approaching the heterogeneity problem in a real-world environment This goal was accomplished in the frame the European IST project Harmonise (Dell’Erba et al., 2002) which initiated a social consensus process in the European tourism context and proposed the first Ontology-based mediator solution for the harmonisation at the bottom information layer The main success of the project can be seen in its positive networking effect, encompassing a large number of tourism players with different backgrounds Thus, the interoperability issues were discussed in a wide forum of experts, giving a real-world perspective to my investigations To the initial requirements of this Tourism Harmonisation Network Harmonise developed an open and extensible solution facilitating an information exchange between heterogeneous systems as the basic building block for solutions on upper layers of business interactions

The first rather hypotetical harmonisation solution shows to be a good candidate to build upon

Nevertheless, the next step foreseen in my work is to evaluate its efficiency and impact on the market within a set of pilot installations, establishing new interaction paths as well as building adjacent channels to existing once Performing such evaluation allows the completion of the first cycle of an iterative methodology, which I selected to drive my research Repeating the steps of problem identification, solution design, implementation and evaluation I intend to refine the outcomes in several cycles leading to a satisfactory result Obviously, such a process might be too lengthy for the period of a PhD research Thus, I limit the iterations to two cycles, aiming at a conclusion in the form of a harmonisation framework proposal

I intend to incorporate qualitative and quantitative investigation methods into my work to guarantee the objectivity of the results So quantitative methods such as surveys and workshops are used in the phases of problem identification (requirement analysis) and evaluation attempting

to target a wide range of potential users and derive a reasonable input to the qualitative research phases of solution design and implementation The Tourism Harmonisation Network as an open consortium of tourism industry players, destinations, world tourism organisations and domain experts serves as a forum for discussing the interoperability issues and offers an optimal platform for the quantitative research tasks

VI Expected Results

Given the heterogeneity of the market as well as of the Web, the specific history of standards in the tourism domain and the lack of a central power instance which can impose such a standard

we foresee that one global, all-embracing standard is very unlikely to be achieved Instead, different standards for different market segments will coexist together with flexible and intelligent mediation solutions (Missikoff et al., 2003)

As a result of my thesis I expect to propose a harmonisation framework for the tourism domain, based on Semantic Web and Web Services technologies as the next step in the evolution of World Wide Web, together with a methodology describing the continual harmonisation process

in this specific domain The philosophy of my work is not to prescribe some fixed mechanism forcing the systems to stick with along the entire lifecycle but to propose dedicated configurable and adaptable tools facilitating the system interactions preserving the diversity of the product The expected solution will approach the heterogeneity problem on all layers of the business relationship stack, starting with the information layer up to the business process layer Different interaction protocols and topologies will be covered to satisfy the broad interoperability requirements of the domain The resulting framework shall encompass a set of compatible tools, freely configurable to support various use scenarios Thus business process integration will be supported along with information integration as well as information exchange capabilities Obviously, I assume to promote the social consensus as the vertical aspect of the solution and the necessary prerequisite for achieving harmonisation at the technology-level

As mentioned earlier, Ontologies will play the key role in the proposed framework, standing at the interface between machine and human worlds as well as representing the common sense of all framework components Adding ontological descriptions to the systems enables to apply modern solutions for data sources discovery, integration, data reconciliation, as well as facilitates the harmonisation of business processes These techniques will be deployed to build dedicated mediator architectures, focusing at a particular use scenario I expect that such a configurable interoperability framework will enable to improve the quality of existing business interactions as well as to create even better networking effect in the domain resulting in an emergence of new business models for the e-tourism market As an example, new border-crossing topic portals cooperating with various destinations world wide along with new collaborative tools dedicated to

the creation of offering combinations from different service providers, as well as improved search mechanisms supporting the discovery of semantically related products to create better travel packages will take place

References

Dell’Erba, M., Fodor, O., Ricci, F & Werthner, H (2002) Harmonise: a solution for data

interoperability In Proceedings of IFIP I3E 2002 Conference, Lisbon, Portugal: Oct

2002, pp 114-127

Fensel, D (2001) Ontologies: Silver Bullet for Knowledge Management and Electronic

Commerce Berlin, Springer Verlag

Missikoff, M., Werthner, H., Höpken, W.; Dell'Erba, M., Fodor, O., Formica, A & Taglino, F

(2003) Harmonise - Towards Interoperability in the Tourism Domain, In Proceedings of

the 10th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Travel & Tourism [ENTER 2003], Helsinki, Finland: January 2003, pp 58-66

Schuster, A (1998) A Delphi survey on electronic distribution channels for intermediaries in the

tourism industry: the situation in German speaking countries In Proceedings of the

ENTER 1998 Conference, Istanbul, Turkey: January 1998, pp 224-234

Travel Industry Association of America Online travel planning grows in popularity,

Retrieved online (Octorber, 2003): http://www.nua.com/surveys

Werthner, H & Klein, S (1999) Information Technology and Tourism – A Challenging

Relationship Wien, New York: Springer Verlag

The Relationship Between Service Quality and Routinisation

or Work: Communicating Specifications for Tourism Product Delivery to Personnel via Occupational Standards

Alexander Gorokhovsky

Saratov State Technical University, Russia

I Problem Definition

Service quality is variously defined but essentially is to do with meeting customer requirements

and how well the service level delivered matches customers’ expectations (Parasuraman et al., 1985; Berry et al., 1991) Having assessed customer needs, organisations set

standards/specifications for service delivery, which are then communicated to personnel via various regulations and rules However, the service delivered can be different from management’s specifications due to variations in the performance of personnel – in many instances the interests of workers are at odds with those of management Thus, the problem for management is to ensure that the service delivered meets the specifications set, while at the same time minimising the cost of an undesirably intrusive (and hence resented) system of management supervision

Among the many examples of standardization of the process of service delivery, leisure activities and tourism, in particular, occupy a very special place The fact that tourism, which can be thought of as a way to escape the daily routine, has itself become extremely routinised, is quite ironic (Ritzer, 2000)

This research proposal is aimed at examining the ways in which the delivery of tourism product

is being standardized (with particular attention to occupational standards) and argues that service quality can be presented as a function of work routinisation This function can be optimised algebraically and the mechanisms of finding the optimal level of standardisation for a particular organisation can be worked out

II Research Hypothesis

It has been argued that work in a contemporary society is transformed into a simplistic, monotonous, and repetitive process, which confines employees to narrowly defined and highly standardised aspects of production subject to rigid management supervision This becomes even more apparent given the developments in today’s IT, which nowadays influences the very ways

in which organisational communication takes place As noted by Woodward (1958) and Blauner (1984), the technology used by an organisation determines and shapes the management and authority structure This results in the feelings of alienation among workers in that they lose control over their primary work lives (Zuboff, 1984)

It seems a fair presumption that alienation is greater in jobs where some interaction occurs between producers and consumers at the point of production (found predominantly in the service sector), since such jobs involve what is sometimes called emotional labour (for example, Hochschild, 1983) In addition to the consequences commonly attributed to work alienation such

as a sense of powerlessness, isolation and meaninglessness, standardisation of interactive service work raises questions about personal identity and authenticity Thus, the combination of routinisation and emotion work will negatively affect workers and result in lower service quality

It can be argued, therefore, that once the level of standardisation of the process of service delivery has reached a certain threshold, service quality, determined by the ability and

willingness of the employees to deliver the desired levels of service, will eventually decline

Where the initial degree of standardisation is low, an increase in routinisation can have a positive impact on productivity levels and service quality However, after routinisation has reached a certain threshold, workers will increasingly experience fatigue and emotional exhaustion, job autonomy will start to diminish, and feelings of alienation will inevitably grow (Kohn and Schooler, 1973; Seeman, 1967) As a result, quality of the services delivered is likely to decline

III Methodology

The dimensions of service quality have been thoroughly investigated in the last decade by both theorists and practitioners, together with associated measurement tools, and numerous examples have been reported (Langer, 1997) Therefore, despite some drawbacks of the existing measurement schemes and tools7, measuring quality of the services delivered with respect to expectations and anticipated benefits and satisfaction/ dissatisfactions of the customers should not be a problem

What constitutes a much more difficult task is determining a degree of job autonomy for a service worker in a particular organisation Kohn (1976) provides substantial evidence that three occupational conditions are of crucial importance in defining the degree of occupational self-direction: closeness of supervision, routinisation, and substantive complexity of work

“Believing that loss of control over the process of work is conducive to alienation, - he wrote, - I hypothesise that being closely supervised, doing routinised work, and doing work of little substantive complexity will result in feelings of alienation” (Kohn, 1976: pp 112-113)

Therefore, it is reasonable to measure these very factors in an attempt to determine how standardised is the work in an organisation and how significant are the feelings of alienation among its employees Occupational standards of performance, as well as job descriptions, and the extent to which these are enforced and implemented, could provide some idea about the tasks, the structure of jobs, and the levels of standardisation in service organisations that we are about

to study However, it is also necessary to address the workers themselves and ask them how routinised is their work in their own opinion

This can be achieved by administering questionnaires in the organisations chosen as the subjects

of our study Closeness of supervision can be indexed by a Guttman Scale based on questions about how much latitude the supervisor allows and how supervisory control is exercised in a service job Routinisation can be measured by the repetitiveness of tasks and the complexity of

‘units’ of work Finally, the substantive complexity of work can be based on detailed questioning

of each respondent about his or her job

VI Expected Results

In order for our theory to be corroborated, the results obtained should fit the inverted U-curve pattern We expect to find poor service quality in organisations with low levels of standardisation, higher levels of quality where standardisation is moderate, and declining quality where it is excessive

7 The issues relating to the statements and scales used in measurement include evidence that not all service dimensions are equally

important Ideally, a weighting of factors is needed; also attributes and weights change over time In addition, some of the scales have

a potential to restrict answers and interpretation of the adjectives used may influence responses Another concern relates to timing of

measurement: before, during or after a particular service encounter

References

Berry, L L & Parasuraman, A (1991) Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality New

York: The Free Press

Blauner, R (1964) Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and His Job Chicago:

University of Chicago Press

Hochschild, A R (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling Berkeley:

University of California Press

Kohn, M & Schooler, C (1973) Occupational Experience and Psychological Functioning: An

Assessment of Reciprocal Effects American Sociological Review, 38, pp 97-118

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V & Berry, L (1985) A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and

Its Implications for Future Research Journal of Marketing, 49, pp 41-50

Ritzer, G (2000) The McDonaldization of Society London: Pine Forge Press

Seeman, M (1967) On the Personal Consequences of Alienation in Work American

Sociological Review, 32, pp 273-285

Woodward, J (1958) Management and Technology London: HMSO

Zuboff, Sh (1984) In the Age of the Smart Machine New York: Basic Books

An Investigation into Tourism Destination Image: Consumer Decision Making in Virtual and Physical Spaces

to deconstruct the destination image and its traditional measurement, both from a demand and supply perspective First, at the demand side a new lifestyle is emerging characterized by mobility, fast-pacedness, polyscriptedness, and parallelization of experiences (walking with Walkman) People include and exclude in multiple spaces, categorized as material space (e.g physical tourism product at the destination), information space (e.g online representations), mental space (e.g perceived destination image) and social space (e.g sharing tourism experiences with social relations), (see Figure 10) Interaction in these spaces or worlds leads to complex, if not chaotic patterns but also novel opportunities (Go and Fenema 2003: p 1) For instance, their participation in increasingly more and different social networks implies that consumers are confronted, on a daily basis, with contrasting worldviews, many of which can be characterized as emotional, leaving a mental imprint Second, from a supply perspective, the argument is “that global technology has deconstructed both nation-states and the old-metaphysics of (social) presence” (Featherstone and Lash 1995: p 13)

II Background

Over the years the body of literature on destination image has grown to a respectable size (a thorough overview being provided by Gallarza et al (2002)) However, as Baloglu & McCleary (1999: p 869) suggest “most studies have largely focused on its static structure by examining the

relationship between image and behaviour”, from a construct measurement perspective Studies have concentrated on the relationship between destination image and: destination preference and visitation intention; destination familiarity and the impact of previous visitation; tourists geographical locations; trip purpose; situational or temporal influences; the image as projected

by the destination; and tourists’ sociodemographical variables “Little empirical research has focused on how image is actually formed,…analysing its dynamic nature by investigating the influences on its structure and formation…, especially in the absence of previous experience with

a destination” (Baloglu and McCleary 1999) Figure 2 therefore tries to deconstruct destination image formation and identify those elements hat have a dynamic influence on how destination image is formulated in the mind of the consumer This model provides the basis for the detailed deconstruction of the destination image paradigm, as addressed throughout the proposed research study This is done from a ‘3-TDS’ gap perspectives (based on the idea of the 5-gap service quality analysis model by Parasuraman et al (1985: p 44)):

Tourism Destination Identity (Anchor):

Authenticity & History Knowledge Culture / Religion Natural Environment

Tourism Product Offering:

Attractions Amenities Access Ancillary Services

Perceived Tourism Experience:

Possible clash of identity/offering and Image

Projected Tourism Destination Image:

Communication & Marketing

Media & ICT (enabler)

Narratives & Expressed meaning

Produced imagination (art & literature)

Tourist Identity:

Cultural background Social characteristics Personal characteristics Psychological characteristics

Word-of-mouth Word-of-mouse

Tourism Development Strategy

Tourism Delivery & Supply

Tourist Demands Specifications

Perceived Tourism Destination Image

Induced Agents

Autonomous Agents Solicited or Unsolicited

Organic Agents Organic Agents

Figure 11: The 3-gap Tourism Destination Image Formation Model Originated from the basic idea

of the 5-gap service quality analysis model by Parasuraman (1985: p 44) and major contributions from Baloglu & McCleary (1999) and Gartner (1993)

Firstly, any destination image should be anchored to some extend on a true destination identity (Go et al in press; Onians 1998; Van Rekom and Go 2003) The tourism development strategy formulates a tourism product, commercialising the offering using this identity and the authenticity of place (staged or real) This results in a projected tourism destination image, through the use of planned marketing and communication, using narratives, as well as produced imagination and expressed meanings beyond the control of destination management, such as for instance in the media, literature, arts, or computer mediated environments Gartner (1993: p 197-201) calls these “induced destination image formation agents” (“overt” as well as “covert”)

Particularly the interactive nature of the Internet adds whole new dimensions to the possibilities

of projecting these destination images, but if the tourism product and the way it is communicated

is not in line with the destination’s identity it can create a Tourism Development Strategy gap Secondly, the projected destination image forms the basis for a perceived destination image in the mind of the consumer, which is mediated by the person’s identity (i.e self-congruity (Baloglu and McCleary 1999; MacKay and Fesenmaier 2000; Sirgy and Su 2000)), potential temporal environmental or situational influences (Gartner and Hunt 1987) (or Autonomous Agents according to Gartner (1993: p 201-203)), and the direct or indirect interaction with other consumers (word of mouth/mouse (Riedl et al 2002), or Solicited or Unsolicited Organic Agents

in Gartner’s terminology (1993: p 203-204)) What results, is a set of personal expectations that the tourist formulates about a particular destination The level to which these expectations are met or exceeded during the actual tourism experience, is what is referred to as tourist satisfaction (Govers and Go 1999) A second, Tourist Demands Specifications gap occurs in this respect when expectations are not met, because of unrealistic tourist demands as specified based on an idealistic perceived destination image In this case, the actual tourism experience will realign the perceived destination image with the perceived reality

This is when the third gap appears, where another way in which tourists can become dissatisfied,

is when the tourism experience, where the guest consumes the tourism product and interacts with the host, is not in line with the tourist’s realistic expectations In such a case the perceived destination image will also be affected (through what Gartner (1993: p 204-205) refers to as Organic Agents) In other words, tourists will adjust their perceptions of places if what was experienced consuming the tourism product, was not corresponding to their perceived destination image, even if the latter was realistic The lack of understanding of the experiential nature of tourism within the tourism industry (Gretzel and Fesenmaier 2003), can easily lead to a mismatch Meaning that, the way the tourism product is delivered is often not a true reflection of

a destination’s identity (or just a poor abstraction of all its multisensory, fantasy and emotive aspects) and fails to incorporate the full potential of the prospective rich tourism experience This

is where the Tourism Delivery & Supply gap plays a role, as what is delivered in terms of product offering is different from the expectations raised through the projected destination image

Branding can be used to mobilise value adding partnerships and networks in the tourism industry

in order to build a coherent product offering communicated in the right way in order to guarantee the emotion-laden tourism experience that consumers are looking for (Bridging the Delivery & Supply gap)

III Research Objectives

Against this background the following research objectives have been formulated:

1 To evaluate new methods for measuring projected and perceived destination image as influenced by the online as well as offline marketing and communication efforts of destination marketing organisations and the tourism industry, and more subtle manipulations as through the media, arts, literature, and other narratives

Ultimately, virtual tours or other interactive multimedia Internet tools, attempt to do nothing more than enhance the online marketing efforts of the travel and tourism industry by positioning its destination’s image A strong image means perceived superior customer value that positively influences buying behaviour and consequently enhances marketing effectiveness (Echtner and

Ritchie 1993; MacKay and Fesenmaier 2000; Padgett and Allen 1997; Sirgy and Su 2000; Tapachai and Waryszak 2000) Many academics have acknowledged the relevance of this research area in the past, and have tried to measure destination image applying multi-attribute systems, using quantitative common measurement scales (Gallarza et al 2002) However, an earlier study by Govers & Go (2001) proved these traditional multi-attribute systems to be incapable of measuring differences in destination image among different groups of consumers that show unequal levels of destination preference (i.e based on this method, tourists that visit a destination regularly, do not report a different image of that destination, compared to non-visitors) Therefore, as also illustrated in the previous section, multi-attribute approaches on their own seem to be inadequate in measuring destination image or visitors’ ratings of tourism destinations and alternative methods should be evaluated

2 To analyse the extent to which the projected and perceived destination images correlate

to the destination’s identity: it’s authenticity, cultural heritage and natural resources

‘Authenticity’ has been a predominant issue in tourism The tourist is said to enjoy the event (Boorstin 1993), that is inauthentic, contrived attractions and disregarding the real world

pseudo-“Over time the images generated within tourism come to constitute a self-perpetuating system of illusions, which may appear as quaint to the local inhabitants as they do to the tourists themselves” (Duncan, 1978: 277 cited by (Urry 2003: p 10)) As Urry (2003: p 11) indicates

“the search for authenticity is too simple a foundation for explaining contemporary tourism There are multiple discourses and processes of the 'authentic'", that driven by the Internet evolution are likely to expand further in future Studying this aspect of projected and perceived destination image, through the analysis of content of publications about destinations as well as consumer responses to them, will give insight into the Tourism Development Strategy gap (gap 1)

3 To identify differences in perceived destination image between consumers with varying cultural backgrounds, and social, personal, and psychological characteristics and how it

is influenced through direct tourism experiences, the hedonic consumption of tourism and the communication with others through word of mouth and mouse

One contemporary issue in destination or brand image is referred to as ‘self-focus’, where the affective evaluations are not a description of the object, but of the relationship between the consumer and the object (Leemans 1994: p 33) Sirgy & Su (2000: p 340) emphasise the importance of ‘self congruity’ in this context, which “involves a process of matching a tourist’s self-concept to a destination visitor image” A study by MacKay and Fesenmaier (2000) provides empirical evidence to support the notion that the manner in which people view images of a destination is mediated by cultural background It would be of interest to identify the extent to which consumers are prejudiced based on prior information, for instance contained in travel guides, but also particularly in cultural media, such as books, movies or visits to museums elsewhere This could be of great influence on destination image and therefore destination choice behaviour As an example, a major cultural event in the Netherlands in remembrance of the painter Vermeer, attracted far more visitors from France than anticipated (100,000, compared to only 6,000 visiting a similar event in remembrance of Rembrandt (Vervoorn 2000)) This success in the French market was later attributed to the fact that Vermeer was part of the post-war French high school curriculum, something not anticipated during the planning and operational stages of the event A similar example of the transitory and impalpable nature of destination image was in the press in 2002 According to a survey of British tourist boards the

‘Queen Mother effect’ had boosted the number of visitors to the UK and helped erase memories