Industrial Mapping Of Tourism Information Technologies
The impact of rapidly developing communication and information technologies (CITs) has been increasingly recognized in tourism and retailing circles and has led to alarming statements concerning the future of tourism [19]. But there have been few attempts
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1 Introduction The impact of rapidly developing communication and information technologies (CITs) has been increasingly recognized in tourism and retailing circles and has led to alarming statements concerning the future of tourism [19]. But there have been few attempts to systematically predict the evolution of tourism marketing and production systems or even to model possible tourism futures. This is surely largely explained by the breadth and depth of the methodological challenges involved and the inextricable nature of tourism as an object of study. This paper explores first the methodological reasons behind the overwhelming difficulties associated with prophesying the future of tourism, emphasizing the relationships between technological considerations and other socio-economic variables shaping the tourism phenomenon. After examining the potential roles played by diverse stakeholders affecting the tourism system, the paper focuses on the specific role of CITs in shaping the production, distribution and consumption of tourism. The paper then explores a recently developed categorization of CITs and uses it to differentiate between types of technological innovations and ultimately distinguish between evolving techno-industrial domains on the basis of the most likely evolutionary drivers. The paper then suggests a primary mapping of various technological developments (CIT-related) identified as critical in the tourism literature and speculates about the main factors driving the changes in tourism technological and industrial organization.
2 The Determination of Tourism's Future It is possible to illustrate the breadth of technology-related issues which have preoccupied tourism marketing and planning analysts with a very brief and admittedly simplistic summary of the evolution of concerns regarding the tourism-technology nexus. A cursory survey of the literature could distinguish changing concerns and identify the following four stages.
1) The early tourism literature embraced the future by identifying historical
D. R. Fesenmaier et al. (eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2000 © Springer-Verlag Wien 2000
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developments which have led to tourism growth. In pre-electronic times, transportrelated technological drives and eco-socio-political institutional changes (mainly linked with rising disposable income and institutionalised rights to "free time") constituted the most visible explanations for extensive tourism growth. The continued development of transport and communication technologies has sustained that growth. There is little precise information regarding the changing organizational structure of present and future tourism. 2) The U.S. airline deregulation led to the radical transformation of distribution through the development of Computer Reservation Systems (CRSs) which ultimately became the giant Global Distribution Systems (GDS). These early CIT developments raised unprecedented conc€rns:" issues of fairness at the user level, potential dominance of direct sales of airlines
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