Some 25 Years of eTourism. 2017-2018 edition

IT for Tourism Services, UniBg 2017-2018 Some 25 Years of eTourism. Lecture 01, October 3, 2017
Some 25 Years of eTourism

IT for Tourism Services, UniBg 2017-2018IT for Tourism Services, UniBg 2017-2018
What Are We Talking About Today?
slide 2Some 25 Years of eTourism. Lecture 01, October 3, 2017
1. What Is Digital?
2. IT & Tourism
3. More Needs
4. Experience
5. The Industry & DMOs
6. Social, Mobile & Big Data
7. Our Calendar This Year

What Is Digital?
Digital derives from the Latin word Digitus, meaning finger.
In short, digital is what can be represented with numbers, which can be counted
with fingers.
Digital is opposed to analogue, which is related to what is not countable: what
cannot be considered within a discrete set of elements.

A real wave, and a digital wave
The MP3 lossy compression works by
reducing (or approximating) the accuracy of
certain parts of a continuous sound that are
considered to be beyond the auditory
resolution ability of most people.
This method is referred to as perceptual
coding. It uses psychoacoustic models to
discard or reduce precision of components
less audible to human hearing.
Source: Wikipedia

Mechanical vs. Digital Watches
A mechanical watch is analogue inasmuch as the position
of each of its three hands (hours, minutes and seconds) can
represent any of the infinite points forming the circle of the
watch itself –- points that cannot be numbered.
In a digital watch,
instead, only the
figures which make
up hours, minutes
and seconds are
usually represented –-
only the 86,400
moments (24 hours x
60 minutes x 60
seconds) making up
the seconds of a day.

Painting, Photographs, and Pixels
An oil on canvas painting, or a watercolour, or a traditional
photograph (a photograph based on a chemical film) consists of
an infinite number of points in an infinite range of colours.
A painting or a chemical photograph can be digitized (scanned,
for instance) and then translated into a digital photo when its
surface is represented as divided into a discrete number of
“points” (usually small squares or rectangles called pixels),
each of which reproduces only one colour in an available range
of 16,777,216 (a combination of 256 shades of red, 256 of green
and 256 of blue –- according to the widely used RGB colour model).

Waves and Bits
Many technologies rely on digital to reproduce a wave (a sound or a light wave)
that was originally analogue.
A modem, as those currently used for ADSL connections,
converts an analogue sound signal that can be sent through
telephone wires into a digital signal, of the sort requested
by computers or other electronic devices working by bits
(1/0).
(By the way, ADSL stands for
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line)

Bits vs. Bytes
A bit (a binary digit) is the basic unit of information in computing;
it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other
physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states.
These may be the two stable states of a flip-flop, two positions of an electrical
switch, two distinct voltage or current levels allowed by a circuit, two distinct levels
of light intensity, two directions of magnetization or polarization, etc.
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and
telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits.
Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text
in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many
computer architectures.
1/0
Yes/No
True/False
This is called a
Boolean Data Type

Digital Is A Revolution
Socially relevant consequences of being digital include
 Information and Communication Technologies (ADSL, broad band, wireless...)
 Information sharing (the Internet, the Web, mobile phones...)
 Email and Social Networking posts (sent and received through the Internet)
 Music and Videos sharing (Mp3, iTunes...)
Digital has changed our lives. Nonetheless, digital is innerly poorer than analogue
inasmuch as it conveys a simplified message.
(This, by the way, may imply that digital communication is invariably poorer than
personal communication.
Let’s not forget it, when communicating through the Internet.)

Communicating In Person
The best way to communicate is meeting someone in
person.
 When you call her/him through a videophone (or
Skype) you miss at least the physical context around
her/him.
 When you call her/him on the phone, you miss the
physical context, and you don’t see her/him.
 When you send her/him an e-mail message, you miss
the physical context, you don’t see her/him, and you
don’t know when and where she/he will read.

Digital Communication
 When you send her/him a text message, you miss the
physical context, you don’t see her/him, you don’t know
when and where she/he will read, and you must keep it
short.
 When post something on the Web, you miss the
physical context, you don’t see your audience, you don’t
know when and where your audience will read, you must
keep it short, and you don’t know –- or know little of –-
your audience.
Let’s not forget all this, when communicating through the Internet!

“Being digital” as a 1995 book
“I am optimistic by nature. However, every technology or gift of
science has a dark side. Being digital is no exception.
The next decade [1995-2005] will see cases of intellectual-property
abuse and invasion of our privacy. We will experience digital
vandalism, software piracy, and data thievery.
Worst of all, we will witness the loss of many jobs. […]
It is here. It is now. It is almost genetic in its nature, in that each
generation will become more digital than the preceding one.
The control bits of that digital future are more than ever before in the hands of the
young. Nothing could make me happier.”
— Nicholas Negroponte, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Digital And Market Capitalisation
Please note that the
three biggest companies
in the world in August
2016 belong to the
Information Technology
sector.
Source: The Economist

IT for Tourism Services, UniBg 2017-2018IT for Tourism Services, UniBg 2017-2018 Some 25 Years of eTourism. Lecture 01, October 3, 2017
The digital revolution and the Information Technologies (IT)
have had a strong impact on tourism, too.
Traditional tour operators, like TUI or Boscolo, and travel
retailers no longer dominate the tourist market.
Some call this process disintermediation.
This means that today Travel Providers -- like Air France,
Deutsche Bahn, or Accor -- can sell their tourist services and
products directly to final customers, and no longer need
traditional agents like tour operators, travel retailers or
ticket offices.
slide 14
IT & Tourism

This is true, but it’s not only a matter of disintermediation...
Actually, Online Travel Agents (OTAs, or OLTAs) like
Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor and Airbnb do not
simply “disintermediate”.
They now run a different sort of intermediation between
Travel Producers and final customers.
Big OTAs like Booking.com, Expedia, TripAdvisor and Airbnb
-- though springing from diverse stories, and adopting
diverse models –- have now all succeeded in taking the place
of traditional tour operators and travel retailers.
slide 15
Online Travel Agents

Digital technologies have paved the way to very interesting
and appealing new ways of selling tourist services and
products directly to final customers.
One of the first has been the so-called Last Minute, which
offer late travel deals.
slide 16
New, Appealing Technologies
Another is Dynamic Packaging -- often connected
with Recommendation Systems -- which allow
customers to build their own travel itineraries by
consulting recommendations from previous tourists
and assembling services accordingly.

This innovation process is fast and still ongoing, and we really don’t know which
new technologies will affect the tourism world in the future.
slide 17
Digital Has Invaded Tourism
Recent instances
have been Uber and
Airbnb, two Big-Bang
Disruptors which now
drive the market, but
began operations only
six or seven years ago.
Tourism has come to be considered a leading innovation field, which an
aggressive industry platform like Skift has prioritized. Some Skift slides follow.

IT for Tourism Services, UniBg 2017-2018IT for Tourism Services, UniBg 2017-2018 slide 18
Skifthistory 1
Some 25 Years of eTourism. Lecture 01, October 3, 2017

Skifthistory 2

Skifthistory 3

More Needs
On the other hand, digital has allowed tourists to
 decide more consciously where to go
 know more about places to be visited
 ask more needs to be fulfilled by tourist operators.
Technological evolutions, in fact, have been relevant not only
to tourist operators.
Quite the opposite: the attitude of travelers’ behaviour has
changed considerably, too.
Today, tourists need a range of information before, during
and after their travel experience –- and share this information!
slide 21
Source: Travelers.com

Before, During & After
Today trips are
 not only planned before departure, but also
 constantly modified, transformed and remodeled during
the experience, due to
 stimuli arising from the trip itself as well as thanks to
recommendations of other tourists who had similar
experiences in the same destination, while
 data gathered during the trip, like photos and comments
posted, help remembering and rethinking afterwards.
slide 22
 Tourist destinations can now cooperate in a co-creation of tourist experience.

Experience
A factor to be considered is the experiential nature of the
tourism product –- as research by Pine & Gilmore have
begun noting since 1999.
When tourists travel, as well as when they get back from a
trip, they tend to share their experience with family and
friends, as partakers during the holiday.
This is why communication practices such as word of
mouth and recommendations have been successful in
tourism communication even before the Internet arrived.
Now the keyword for this is User Generated Content (UGC).
slide 23

TripAdvisor
The first website to take off thanks to the eWord of Mouth
(eWOM) -- and actually the very first platform to gather
User Generated Content on a mass scale -- was TripAdvisor.
Although it has been turned into an Online Travel Agent in
recent years, TripAdvisor was born in February 2000 as a
tourist community.
As its founders said, "We started as a site where we were focused more on
those official words from guidebooks or newspapers or magazines.
We also had a button in the very beginning that said, ‘Visitors, add your
own review’, and pretty soon the number of average consumer reviews far
surpassed the number of 'professional reviews'.”
slide 24

Industry vs. DMOs
As we saw from the Skifthistory, IT and tourism have long
been parallel and rapidly growing phenomena.
The tourism industry began using IT to improve the
transportation, intermediary and hospitality sectors
shortly after WW2. Those were the years when Computer
Reservations Systems (CRS) -- later Global Distribution
Systems (GDS), like Sabre and Amadeus -- were born.
Then the Internet era fully started (1991-2002), and both
the industry and Destination Management Organizations
(DMOs) began developing websites, in order to
communicate smoothly with their potential customers.
slide 25

Customer Care & Support
In 1991-2002 DMOs involved local actors -- or, rather, tried
to involve local actors... -- by centralizing and distributing
tourist information and services from various partners in
their own destinations’ territories.
However, during the second decade of the Internet era
(2002-today) the change has been more radical.
Operators and DMOs have shifted from creating
technological artifacts, like websites, to customer care and
increased support to the tourists’ decision-making process.
slide 26
Today, as we mentioned, DMOs can take part in the co-creation of tourist experience.

Social Media
We can say that four recent developments related to the
rise of the Internet as a communication environment
have contributed and are still contributing to the shift.
1. The so-called Web 2.0 and social networking platforms
-- like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Google+, as well as
communities like Flickr, YouTube, or TripAdvisor itself --
have turned the attention of tourist operators and
destinations (or, actually, some of them...) to a better
interaction with tourists.
slide 27

Mobile, GPS and Broadband
2. More recently, mobile devices (smartphones and tablets)
have emerged and consolidated on a global scale, making
high computing power and constant connectivity available
to a wider audience. Obviously, users take advantage of
these opportunities during their travel experience, too.
3. Moreover, smartphones now “know” where their owners
are located, thanks to the Global Positioning System (GPS).
4. In addition, the first years in this second decade of the
Internet era have witnessed the expansion of high-speed
connections, or broadband.
slide 28

Networks & Big Data
Social networking platforms, telecoms, geopositioning and
wi-fi combine to gather an enormous set of data. They are
what we’ve become accustomed to refer to as Big Data.
Big or small that they can be..., these data are not
homogeneous, and have different owners.
Yet they can –- theoretically, at least -- be gathered,
analyzed, and used.
This is enough, for our first meeting... Now, let’s consider
how and when we will deal with all this before Christmas.
slide 29
Source: Google

Our October Calendar
01. Today
25 Years
of eTourism
02. Thursday, Oct 5
Networks and
Social Networks
04. Thursday, Oct 12
Mobile, Smartphones,
Telecoms, Wi-Fi, and
Apps
03. Tuesday, Oct 10
Destinations,
the Industry, and
Peer-To-Peer
A 7Loci Quality
Evaluation Model for the
web presence of DMOs
05. Tuesday, Oct 17
Quality, and
the 7Loci
Meta-Model
A 7Loci Quality Evaluation
Report on the web
presence of a DMO
Some 25 Years of eTourism. Lecture 01, October 3, 2017 slide 30

Gradually approaching the assessment...
08. Tuesday, Oct 31
Analytics, Insights,
Cookies, and the
Disappearing Privacy
09. Tuesday, Nov 14
Web Reputation:
Likes, Engagement
& Sentiment
11. Tuesday, Nov 28
Design: Usability,
Gamification, Augmented
& Virtual Reality
12. Tuesday, Dec 5
Big-Bang
Disruptions
and Tourism
13. Tuesday, Dec 12
Your reports’
presentation:
1st group
14. Thursday, Dec 14
Your reports’
presentation:
2nd group
15. Tuesday, Dec 19
Your reports’
presentation:
3rd group
Some 25 Years of eTourism. Lecture 01, October 3, 2017 slide 31
10. Tuesday, Nov 21
Design: Content,
Copyright &
Creative Commons

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Some 25 Years of eTourism. 2017-2018 edition