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E-COMMERCE
AND TOURISM
Has e-commerce passed its prime or is it just resting? While business and
stock market expectations have not been fulfilled, online transactions in
the travel and tourism industry are continuously increasing despite
tough economic problems in this arena and fewer travelers overall. This
industry is the leading application in the B2C (business-to-consumer)
arena. Whereas other industries are displaying a stronger hold to tradi-
tional processes, the tourism industry is witnessing an acceptance of e-
commerce to the extent that the entire industry structure is changing.
The Web is used not only for information gathering, but also for order-
ing services. A new type of user is emerging, one who acts as his or her
own travel agent and builds a personalized travel package.
In 2003 more than 64 million Americans for Regional and Tourism Research (www.crt.dk).
30% of the U.S. adult populationused the One survey predicts that by 2007, 30% of all
Internet to look for information about destina- B2C transactions in the German-speaking Euro-
tions or to check prices and schedules. And two- pean countries will be enacted via the Internet
thirds of them42 millionbooked travel via [9], while other market research institutes have
the Internet, an 8% gain over 2002, according to made predictions ranging on either side of this
the Travel Industry Association of America figure. All of these statistics are problematic in
(www.tia.org). In the same period European that researchers used different variables and mea-
online travel sales increased by 44%, reaching surement methods, with some researchers distin-
over $14 billion, according to the Danish Center guishing between e-business and e-commerce and
access, market overview, and price comparisons. can be exploited in applications such as travel plan-
ning and scheduling, visitor guidance systems, indi-
vidual pricing, reverse auctions, or workflow
Tourism IT System Trends management for supporting cooperative market-
The emerging business scenario is based on flexible places. Some of the technologies expected to have a
network structures and increasing consumer inte- major impact include the following:
gration. If one adds the tourist life cycle, taking into Information extraction. Tourist information portals
consideration the mobility of travelers, one can link are still largely based on unstructured information. A
the respective tourist phases with company critical problem in developing distributed systems
processes (see Figure 2). involves accessing information formatted for human
Processes obviously cross company borders, lead- use and transforming it into a structured data format,
ing to distributed B2B2C applications, supporting such as XML. This problem is tackled by wrapping
both company cooperation as well as mobile com- techniques. Such techniques provide highly accurate
munication with consumers. Technology based on a extraction rules that adapt to structural site changes,
common pervasive infrastructure will become trans- ensuring the correct extraction of data [5, 6].
parent, or invisible to the consumer, and information Information integration. Wrappers can be built
will be available at home, work, and during travel. In atop structured or semistructured information
such a scenario IT systems should: sources. This sets the stage for systems that answer
queries based on the extraction and combination of
Support heterogeneous data formats and business data fetched from multiple wrappers [4]. Tourism-
functions as well as distributed data sources. related information sources represent a perfect appli-
Such systems must account for different types of cation for such technologies. For example,
participating entities, with their functional dif- Theaterloc is an information integration application
ferences; that lets users retrieve information about theaters and
Be scalable and open with regard to geographical restaurants in the U.S. from five distinct online
and functional extensions. They will support the sources [1]. The core components of this application
entire consumer life cycle and all business are a mediator that exploits AI planning technolo-
phases; gies, a domain model (containing a unifying ontol-
Enable full autonomy of the respective partici- ogy), and a set of axioms describing mapping
pants but enhance cooperative behavior, provid- relationships between the integrated data view and
ing sophisticated tools for suppliers as well as the sources. When queries are posed, the system rea-
dynamic network configurations; sons about the domain model and source descrip-
Integrate mobile and fixed services, enabling tions in order to build a plan for retrieving and
multichannel access to services provided by the integrating data.
various players; Information presentation. Tourism, particularly
Support attentive user interfaces and personaliza- cultural heritage, is a privileged application domain
tion through extensive exploitation of user mod- for intelligent information presentation techniques
eling, taking into consideration user behavior [10]. Natural language technologies have been used
and cognition as well as emotional aspects. to build contextual presentations and speech and ges-
ture recognition. Also, animated characters support
The research and development activities crossing an augmented interactivity involving users in the
travel and tourism applications have addressed appreciation of their cultural heritage. Applications
these themes, producing some remarkable results. have been developed where the exhibit and the infor-
Quite naturally, many such activities follow an AI- mation presentation are blended. For example, the
based approach, using horizontal technologies that user, monitored by a set of sensors, can activate per-