9.1 TOURIST INFORMATION ON WEB
Tourism is of such enormous importance to many economies, including those of highly developed countries, that it is not surprising that there is a very large and rapidly growing number of websites devoted to it. A vacation trip is not one of those items that one can see and touch before purchase. Choosing and planning a vacation have to be based on information supplied by an intermediary (e.g. travel agent or friend) or directly by the provider. To make travel and accommodation reservation one normally goes to a travel agent. Among the great advantages of the WWW in the tourism business is that it enables the customer to have much easier direct access to a very large amount of up-to-date information and to do the reservations from home. Many government-financed tourist offices have recognized the importance of the Web and have put much effort into developing good sites.
In most cases (at present at least, although due to technological developments this is about to change) the tourist has no access to the WWW while on a vacation trip. Therefore he or she has to try to collect information before departure. While on a trip, conventional guidebooks and maps will still be used, so it is not surprising that one subsidiary aim of many tourist sites is to sell these. The Web perhaps does not (yet) compete with guidebooks in portability, but it can offer things which guidebooks cannot, e.g. sound and video sequences, virtual reality models (still rather limited), direct links to many other sources of information and online reservation services. A full guidebook may in fact be put on the Web (paid for by advertising revenue), or the tourist can compile a personalized guidebook before departure by simply printing the selected web pages. The aim of the makes of tourist web pages is not only to provide information but also actively to promote the product, which must therefore be made to appear as attractive as possible
9.2 EXAMPLES OF OFFICIAL AND COMMERCIAL WEBSITES
Maps can play a very important part in providing information to tourists, so it is rather disappointing to find that maps are not used as much as they could be on tourist websites, and where they are their design and use is often not very imaginative. An example is the award-winning official site of the Tourist Office of Spain (URL 9.1), containing (in summer 2000) only a few small, simple, non-clickable maps. This may perhaps reflect the particular market. Countries such as Spain which rely very heavily on packaged holidays to beach resorts may feel less need for maps on their websites than those which rely more on individuals on
Despite the nature of tourism to the island. The Irish Tourist Board site (URL 9.2), also an award winner, only introduced the interactive use of maps, based on maps of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, In late 1999. This website can be taken as a general illustration of the importance of the Internet to tourism and (when accessed in December 1999) it also illustrates many of the specific capabilities of tourist maps on the WWW. The Board stated in mid-1999 that so far that year there had been an increase of 68% in the number of visitors to the site compared to 1998, when the total was 1M. The Internet is now the most important source of information for visitors to the country. The site offers “over 11 000 places to stay and 100 000 things to see and do”. It contains information in various categories, including how to get there. There is an online booking service to over 3000 accommodation addresses. Visitors to the site can easily compile and print their own personal brochure.