Improving the Efficiency of Marketing Information Access and Use by Tourism Organizations

Since reliable information is a key requirement for effective marketing, many tourist offices have used the advances in computing to create systems that extensively record tourism data. Nevertheless, many tourism managers have encountered difficulties in accessing and exploiting this data efficiently. This article describes different technological approaches to improve easy access to statistical data. The access problems that the study confronts are those where the potential user lacks detailed knowledge of the available data. The solution presented is basically a procedure which analyzes large data sets and reports the results in table format. The presentation requirements of the information and the necessary guidance through the data warehouse leads to two research problems which are addressed in this paper. The database used in this study is a collection of tourism statistics that has been created by the Austrian National Tourist Office in close collaboration with the Vienna University for Economics. The online hypertext database is called TourMIS and is implemented on the World Wide Web and used by 256 European tourism managers. Analyzes of the server’s log file shows a significant correlation between different presentation styles and the usability of the system. Exploring content and quantity of requested information by user groups also lead to results which will contribute to a more efficient architecture of Marketing Information Systems in tourism.