Tourist industry and technology: Bright futures to the sales promotion true the Web site info or the digital television shopping. A case in Crete.

Dr. Mag. Karagiannis Stefanos Applied Research at Market Services Lab. Management and Economics School

Technological Educational Institute of Crete P.O. Box 1939 Iraklio, GR 71004 GREECE

[email protected] http: www.ctr-crete.gr\ereunas

Abstract

The international tourism industry is dependent on information technology for its future growth, competitiveness and long-term survival — particularly in terms of tourism info and distribution. In this paper we review extensive work undertaken on the expansion of the World Wide Web and digital television as informational means. The World Wide Web (WWW) is one of the Internet’s Basics. 1 It not only adds graphical interface but also it makes presentation of voice, data graphics etc (E-Commerce and Information Technology in Hospitality and Tourism/Zongoing Zhou, PH.D.) The paper concludes by highlighting online tourism organizations, from 10 countries and 16 sites of mainly competitive tourism countries concerning our country (tourism countries near to Crete) as Spain, Turkey, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, Malta, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, that need to confront the problems of converting Web browsers into buyers, and outline an agenda for future research.

Keywords

Web, digital TV, information, tourism sales promotion, technology

Introduction

It has been well documented that the WWW and, to a lesser extent, television information are set to revolutionize sales (mainly reservations), booking and distribution, and that the tourist industry is likely to be particularly affected since it is highly information- driven. The sheer size and dynamic nature of 15 countries of fastest-growing areas of commercial activity have ensured that technology and tourism are increasingly interdependent and that, indeed, technology is dictating the reformation of the entire tourism industry. Tsukas V. has described the information superhighway as ‘an electronic wind’, stating that once the ‘flood of technological innovations has seeped into every type of business and industry, the entire landscape of retail and service industries will be dramatically rearranged’. Thus, this “wind” sweeping across the service sector is all the more critical in tourism because, as an intangible product, its marketing largely depends upon visual representation. The critical need for tourism businesses to embrace technology in order to create and sustain a competitive advantage has been extensively emphasized in the strategic marketing literature, but was perhaps stated most succinctly by Buhalis: ‘organizations and destinations which need to complete will be forced to compute….only creative and innovative suppliers will survive’. Notwithstanding this, however, as Cline notes, in today’s knowledge driven economy….technology stands as both a formidable power and challenging dilemma. Tsukas V. also holds the opinion that “Products need to have full documentation of their characteristics. Production methods, quality control and the related production conditions, such as health and safety of workers, environmental matters and accountability, need to be documented by accredited scientists, registered in the appropriate verbal and submitted and approved by the corresponding public authority. “

Our desk research

The research has explored the strategic use of technology in sales promotion, while other studies have focused on the impacts of technology on specific tourism sectors, such as travel agents. Many studies of these studies have favored quantitative approaches, either for benchmarking or data collection purposes, while none has attempted a comparative investigation of consumer perceptions of the Internet and digital television.

Understanding the importance of WWW to tourism organizations, this research work addresses three principal research objectives. First, it attempts to review the extensive literature on tourism and Web sales promotion and on the much less studied area of digital television travel shopping. Our second objective is to report of the findings of a small-scale exploratory study which compared consumers' perceptions of the Web sales promotion. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for the tourism industry, highlighting the need for online organizations to adopt strategies enabling the increase of the number of online tourism customers.

Tourism and the World Wide Web

Undoubtedly the most important recent development in communication technology has been the expansion of the Internet, and in our case WWW and eCommerce. The Web has tremen- dous sales promotion, whether it is used to sell directly or as a vehicle to attract and stimulate consumer interest, and it allows small companies to compete on a 'virtual' level playing field with larger rivals. For such tourist companies, for the first time ever, the Web enables the combination of interactivity with advertising — allowing them both to promote their message and to process the end transaction, offering consumers the opportunity to investigate, browse and purchase travel and tourism products. Prior to the advent of the WWW, organizations needed at least two media for sales promotion to raise awareness and a sales medium (face to face or telephone) to process the transaction. Today, websites are channels of distribution as well as communication — making the conversion of interest into action and sales more immediate — and they are particularly useful for last -minute and out-of-hours bookings. The online information advantages are equally evident – as illustrated by Microsoft’s Ex- pedia (www.ex-pedia.msn.co.uk), which offers the user 75,000 package holiday deals from the leading tour operators, 400 airline timetables, 800,000 bucket – shop fares and details of 50,000 hotels, all of which can be booked online (plus destination weather forecasts, maps and on line magazine).

The challenges of online tourism marketing

As a new medium the WWW is experiencing some problems, particularly with regards to how speedily and simply consumers can identify and retrieve the information they require. It is an unwieldy tangle of information; browsing can be very slow and as more people go online they increasingly encounter ‘virtual traffic jams’ (Table 1 summarizes the problems facing tourism Web marketers).

Compared to other alternatives, however, the Web does offer marketing opportunities at a reasonable cost in terms of providing, updating and customizing information and interactively communicating with a potential user. But while the costs might be manageable from a marketing perspective, for the e-consumer they are potentially high: certainly in Europe high telephone charges (by comparison to the USA) remain a major barrier to access. Indeed, Web access remains a major problem. At the moment, three-quarters of the world’s population cannot access the internet – either through lack computer connections or lack of political freedom. Moreover, while in USA 42 % of the population already owns a PC – four out of five of them being able to online regularly via a modem – in the UK less than a third of consumers have a PC (less than half of these have a modem), and about half of the 7.5 million who do go online regularly can only do so at work.

Table 1: Problems of tourism Web sales promotion in Crete

1) Tourism companies' failure to brand consistently online. 2) Inadequate design expertise resulting in inferior sites and poor-quality information 3) Umbrella brand sites (such as destinations) are threatened by disagreement among members over the content, cost and format of a shared internet facility; such sites also face stiff competition from other internet service providers. 4) Suppliers bias towards business travellers and higher-priced products. 5) Supplier reticence and consumer scepticism. 6) Information overload and Web complexity for consumers - Safety and privacy concerns - The cost of access 7) Fear of commitment to the electronic unknown by consumers and suppliers.

.Source: Adapted from Williams, P. and Palmer, A. (1999) 'Tourism destination brands and electro commerce: Towards synergy?', Journal of Vacation Marketing, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 263-275.

Profiling the online audience

Numerous surveys that have been conducted try to estimate the impact of the WWW, the profile of its users and the levels of e-commerce activity. Unfortunately, many of these surveys offer contradictory information — in terms of both current user patterns and profiles and future use projections. This makes it difficult to quantify the WWW's impact on the tourism industry but , while future take-up is hard to predict exactly, massive growth is expected — linked to the increasing numbers of service providers and set-top television boxes. The WWW is a new medium, experiment in certain problems, more especially concerning the speed and the simplicity that the consumers can recognize and recover the information that needs. As it is a difficult in the entanglement of information, browsing can become very late and as most people are connected to the network occasions of ‘simulated circulatory congestion’ may appear. Table 2 presents a brief overview of the number of internet users according to languages spoken. Comparatively with other alternative solutions, without doubt, the Web offers purchasing occasions in reasonable cost from this opinion, provided that is programmed and arranged the information of customers and communicate with interaction, with one likely virtuous. However as long as the cost is administrative from a purchasing prospect, for consumer likely he is high: surely in Europe the high telephone rates remain a big obstacle in the access.

TABLE 2

WORLDWIDE INTERNET USERS BY LANGUAGE

Languages Internet access, World online 2004 estimated 2002 (1,000s) population % population (1,000s) English 230 36.5 280 European 224 35.5 328 (non-English) Asian (including 179 28.3 329 Chinese) Chinese 68 10.8 170 Total world 619 940 Source: complied by the author, from Global Reach, www.glreach.com (2001)

Sketching out the connected with the network public

Many researches have been guided in the calculation of repercussion of the WWW, picture of his users and the levels of advertising activity. Unfortunately, many of these researchers offer contradictory information – in case they use and the regular utilitarian models the future designers. This complicates the qualitative determination of repercussion of the WWW and tourist industry, but as long as the future develops is difficult to be forecasted with precision, the mass growth is expected connected with the increasing number of benefits of services and installations of television appliances. Certain analysts disagree in that as long as the WWW is compared as a ‘magic key’, it is not right to formulate the appearance of one formal virtuous. As long as this probably becomes the main affair in the near future, this time the network continues being an erroneous demographic model and the afflux virtuous prefer to be more educated, richer and more the intermediate order. Today, however, the greatest challenge for the connected with the network travelling companies is to change the simple visitors of web pages into buyers. Even if a lot of advertising web pages from all the descriptions receive thousands daily ‘hits’, so much few as long as the 5% of visitors make markets through the internet. The ‘wired travellers’ prefer more to make use of internet from any other resources travelling information (as magazines and books) and above the 2/3 from them using in order to they make researches and they draw their travels. In other words, nearly 60% of people will use the Internet either as the sole or as a complementary (see Table 3) Unsurprisingly, the ‘wired travellers’ who use the Internet often are more willing to buy things through it, from the frequent users – above half from those who use the network daily have hardly buy something, compared to the 1/5 from them, they least use the network from one time the week.

TABLE 3 INFORMATION SOURCES FOR FUTURE TRAVEL PLANNING INFORMATION SOURCE NUMBER PERCENTAGE Printed brochures and the internet 335 42.8 Printed brochures 296 37.8 Word of moth 184 23.5 Internet 116 14.8 Travel agents 54 6.9 Source: Zhou and Lin (2000)

The growth of television shopping

In much the same way as the expansion the WWW, the growth of satellite, cable and digital television is revolutionizing tourism sales promotion. The new digital services incorporate interactive services facilitating home shopping and providing the opportunity for customers to purchase travel and tourism through their remote control. Seen as the most important current trend for travel technology, such a channel of distribution provides consumers with direct, easy access to information — access which will become faster and more selective with the increasing proliferation of television set-top digital boxes allowing Web access. Digital television will enable more sophisticated holiday advertising on the Teletext services, as the pages ill be enhanced to enable companies and organizations to differentiate their pages with branded messages. The interaction of television and WWW is still unattainable for a lot of consumers in Crete, the probability of travelling benefits-service like television markets is enormous from the scope that also the public and the sales, and as long as it is seen only by a small part of purchasing public, in the intermediate period the sales of travels via the television are a mass occasion. The familiarity with the television exceeds by far the computer and the internet, the television is placed in the centre of most families, in a salon, in a place of study or in office. Besides, using the remote control is not required any electronic knowledge and thus they are deprived the ‘wall’ to adopt corporate the newer technology in the internet.

Study methodology

The primary purpose of the study reported in this paper is a comparative investigation of consumer perceptions of the Web site and digital television. As discussed above, while there is an extensive literature on the WWW and tourism sales promotion, television marketing and travel shopping is much less researched. As a result, a research strategy was required which would facilitate the generation of rich insights in the consumer’s perceptions and attitudes and which would be appropriate to an exploratory study. In such a scenario, qualitative approaches, unlike quantitative ones, are the obvious route — enabling the research to generate rich, diverse social data. Qualitative exploratory approaches are concerned to investigate meanings which 'reside in social practice, and not just in the heads of individuals', and they are especially valuable in learning the language of particular groups of people. They thus provide 'valuable insight into the social and contextual circumstances surrounding leisure involvement and, as such, are ideally suited to exploring how people confront new leisure situations and circumstances.

The findings of our study

What consumers want from the Web booking

The focus institute students’ group generally exhibited a mixed reaction to their Web ex- periences. Some aspects were felt to be particularly positive, while others were more negative (the lack of detailed information and help facilities and the poor visual quality of sites). The best aspects of their online experiences were the holiday and flight student finders, which were felt to be 'quicker than flicking through pages of brochures', but at the same time could be used at the consumer's own pace as opposed to the rush participants often felt in travel agencies. As one student commented: 'You don't have to queue for speaking to an agent ... and you're not rushed to make a choice'. Likewise the Web was considered to offer other advantages — for instance, there were no aggressive sales consultants offering what one participant described as 'the "Can I suggest somewhere else?" conversation'. However, the holiday and flight finders were also considered to offer limited criteria, which were not specific enough to offer the Web user a tailor-made product. Significantly, students wanted detailed, explicit information on the Web. Such information needed to be included is at a minimum supplied in the traditional brochure, such as flight timetables. The fact that no flight times appeared on some sites was particularly frustrating for the participants as these were considered to be one of the most important elements when choosing a holiday, and especially when making a flight-only purchase. Participants were also concerned at the relatively poor help facilities on sites. The students were alsovery concerned to emphasize the role photographs played in their vacation decisions making process, and most said that they relied more on the brochure photographs to choose suitable resorts than price. As a result, they were keen to see websites feature a wide range of high-quality photographs and were disappointed with the visual quality of the sites — considering the many fuzzy, out-of-focus offerings far from adequate. They were regarded as disappointing and 'too small to show any [thing] in particular'. Without this kind of recommendation, participants were concerned about whether featured resorts would meet their specific requirements.

Exploring the dilemma of simple student for information in Internet

Reinforcing the browser student dilemma highlighted by the scale students of Web users discussed above, this study with students confirms that respondents would make their booking elsewhere, attracted largely by the face-to-face contact at high-street travel agencies. Although over half of the students said that they would return to the Web, most said that they would use it to acquire information on packages and prices prior to visiting a travel agency. Of more importance for the students was missing the experience of going to the high-street travel agency and interacting face to face with travel agents. As some students said: ‘I like talking to the girls in the shop, they’re really friendly. I wouldn’t know where to start…..I didn’t like it on there (the website)….’. In comparison to their experiences of traditional high- speed travel agents, the asked students of all semesters found out that they were receiving limited information and advice from the Web, ‘it just doesn’t compare….. the site actually states that all of their products cannot be displayed and that you need to contact the company for further packages’. In general, while the focus groups through that one of the Web’s major advantages over the high-street travel agent was lower cost, with no commissions, they also favored independent agents who would offer a wider range of products. Of course, not all participants had access to the Web – as one older man said ‘I don’t have a computer and I don’t know anyone who has so I can’t see how I could get on it again’.

Asked students as (future) television travel buyers

Interestingly, the students’ relationships with television travel shopping were much less complex and much more positive than their perceptions of the Website. The majority of students preferred the concept of television shopping to visiting travel websites and most preferred the familiarity of the television to the daunting experience of going online. Those students who had limited computer skills said of their brief Web experiences: 'I was scared to touch the hand thing [the mouse] in case I did something wrong and broke the computer', in a similar vein, another was remarking: 'I had problems getting the arrow to stay on what I wanted ... and then clicking the buttons fast enough'. Comments such as 'I didn't like it on the computer ... I know how to use the TV’ were typical reactions from those who had little experience of computers. But a fear of computers was not the only reason they offered to explain their preference for the television — many more experienced Web users mentioned the larger and clearer images on a television set, and a number of students suggested that cost even hypothetically were higher once a digital box or satellite dish and also they don’t have all a computer. This was seen as one of the main advantages of the Web concerning with television shopping: 'you are going to get clearer, sharper images on the TV But it cannot have a lot of choices ... plus sitting front of the TV is not very comfortable', said one student, whilst another commented that 'I'm always going to choose Website… most students will ... the Internet is cheap'.

Implications for the tourism industry

Comparing students perceptions of the Website Info and television travel shopping

The principal objective of this study was to conduct an exploratory investigation of consumer behavior and their attitude to the Web Information and whereat television shopping. The study clearly suggests that students will continue to use the Web, but while the most see it as a source of convenient, up-to-date information rather than as a means to book a travel service. While the Web was felt to provide a useful information tool, specific problems which students identified here included the poorer quality and more restricted range of images on websites, compared with brochures or television travel channels, but this is only an assumption. In this study, the alleged television shopping would have been seen by students of all semesters and segments exhibit the confidence to offer several key competitive advantages over the Web Info. Television shopping according students’ opinion was seen as more sociable, more entertaining, more exciting and more personal than the Website — probably because of the familiar and personal nature of the medium. Furthermore, once they had decided on their choice of holiday, students were able to make direct contact with an operator in the call center — almost replicating the experience of using a travel agency. The success of television travel shopping is not merely dependent on the consumer's relationship with the television. This study has shown that consumers are prepared to confirm the products and prices being offered via traditional brochures and the Web. In their experience, these supplementary searches have revealed travel shop offering to be cheaper, which in turn have created very satisfied consumers who are then prepared to recommend the service to other potential buyers. Such findings suggest that television travel shopping channels are well placed to capitalize on the benefits brought by technological advance. Similarly, with continuing expansion of digital television the study would also seem to suggest that online companies are going to have to work harder to try to combat the challenge of home shopping via the television — a medium which achieves much higher levels of consumer confidence and familiarity than the WWW.

The future for high-street travel agents

While some commentators have predicted that the growth of the WWW heralds the demise of the high-street travel agent, this opinion has contradicted the continuing role of the high-street travel agency in consumer travel choices, as a finding supported by others who have noted consumers' increasing desire for guidance and reassurance in a complex and diverse market. The travel agent retains a significant role in vacation choices — acting as both information providers and choice guarantors. While there is clearly a complicated, somewhat contradictory relationship between consumers and travel providers, in this opinion most participants liked the reassurance and convenience of personal contact offered by both travel agents and television shopping, despite some concerns that they might be pressured by nervous salespeople. Indeed, these qualities were sufficiently strong to override the Web's main perceived advantage — that it offers lower-priced products. Instead, travel agents were seen as providing time-saving expertise in locating information, as having a reputation for transaction security and as providing reliability and responsibility. Despite such findings, however, while travel agents may not be under immediate threat from the Web, they must clearly respond to the challenges posed by both the WWW and television shopping. This assignment confirms the work of those who suggest that in order to update their offers, improve customer satisfaction and remain competitive, travel agents must adopt a rather counseling role, offering advice in decision making and IT support for those consumers embracing the new services.

Conclusion

The arrival of Internet has brought revolution in the sector of communications consequently and in the sector of tourism. As all the existing data show that Internet will constitute more and more from now on a key factor while one of the basic priorities of tourist industry in international level is expected that it will be to complete exploitation of all of possibilities of this very powerful ‘vehicle’, so as to constitute factor of further attenuation of distribution cost of tourist products and services (Money and Tourism). The benefits of services and their possibilities are enormous, helping not only the services in the travelling agencies but also anyone that can have access via his computer. Technology evolves rapidly even regarding television giving the opportunity of novel sales channels for tourism. The overwhelming majority of people who were asked, however, would prefer to make reservation via some travelling agency, where one would be given the possibility to communicate and discuss with the agent, get advice him and answers to all the likely queries immediately, possibilities that no television or computer program are capable of realise currently.

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