The tourism industry is characterized by ever-increasing competition, causing destinations to seek new methods to attract tourists. Traditionally, a decision to visit a destination is interpreted, in part, as a rational calculation of the costs/benefits of a set of alternative destinations, which were derived from external information sources, including e-WOM (word-of-mouth) or travelers' blogs...

Information communication technologies (ICTs) have significantly revolutionized travel industry in the last decade. With an increasing number of travel companies participating in the Internet market, low price has become a minimum qualification to compete in the Internet market. As a result, e-service quality is becoming even more critical for companies to retain and attract customers in the di...

The case describes the market growth of Web Reservation International an Irish SME company, which is a market leader in the Budget, Independent and Youth Travel (BIYT) market through its online reservation system. The case describes the development of the company through organic growth and acquisitions. The case raises four main questions. Is the WRI domination position sustainable in the long ...

• You are a talented young writer looking to break into magazine journalism • You are enthusiastic and passionate about travel • You can research a story • You love to write and have written for a newspaper, magazine or blog • You can do administrative jobs when things are quiet • You are energetic and a self starter • You have a media, communications, and journalism degree or already work in t...

Tourism is regarded to be the world's largest industry, with about 8% of the worldwide export value of goods and services coming from tourism. Receipts from international tourism are in the order of US$ 475 billion (2000 values). These benefits resulting from international travel can be weighted against the environmental costs of tourism, including the loss of biodiversity, ecosystems, land, an...

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of strategy and market orientation on the performance of the travel industry. Using the Taiwanese travel industry’s electronic commerce as a primary research target, this paper will use the ‘‘contingency–structure–result’’ framework. Employing factor analysis and the Linear Structural Relations method for verification, the results indic...

We propose a framework for understanding circumstances under which information technology (IT) innovations for electronic commerce (EC) change firmlevel strategic choices, and the economic forces behind these choices, in Internet market competition. We identify a recurring pattern of intermediation, disintermediation and reintermediation: the “IDR cycle.” With this framework, we explain technol...

This paper illustrates an approach to combining the benefits of a multi-agent system architecture with the use of industry-standard modelling techniques using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Using a UML profile for ontology modelling, an ontology for travel booking services is presented and the automatic derivation of an object-oriented content language for this domain is described. This c...

We introduce new elevator group control algorithms that can be implemented to be real-time compliant on embedded microcontrollers. The algorithms operate a group of elevators in a destination call system, i. e., passengers specify the destination floor instead of the travel direction only. The aim is to achieve small waiting and travel times for the passengers. We provide evidence, using simula...