Discovering next generation tourism information systems: A tour on TIScover
Journal of Travel Research; Boulder; Nov 2000; Birgit Proll; Werner Retschitzegger;

Abstract:
Information technology has been playing a fundamental role in the tourism industry for a long time. The Internet particularly is increasingly emerging as a perfect platform to bring tourism products direct to the customer. Web-based tourism information systems, however, are required not only to offer online brochures but also to provide both value and service. The Austrian tourism information system, TIScover, meets this challenge by focusing on three crucial points. First, high-quality access is provided. Second, the content is of high quality that is achieved by enabling tourism information providers to maintain their products directly, as well as by integrating external tourism information sources. Finally, the system is designed in such a way that is easy to customize.

Summary:  

This system is of particular relevance to the adventure tourism industry due to the fact that it works as a search engine for the country. It is for this reason that it's influence could be highly valuable to any organisation within the tourism industry.

The number of tourists who use Web-based tourism information systems for pre-trip planning jumped from 3.1 million in 1996 to 33.8 million in 1998, a 1,000% increase in 2 years (Travel Industry Association of America [TIA] 1999b). Furthermore, it is predicted that within the next 10 years, 30% of the whole tourism business will be done via the Internet (Schuster 1998).

There are two major factors, among others, in these promising figures. First, the special properties of tourism products-- heterogeneity, intangibility, and perishability-make them very information intensive and thus especially suited for offering and selling electronically.

Why is this exactly, is it because it is cheaper to put on the internet? Or is it because a user can use search/ find tools within the site to find exactly what they want? As for the fact that these types of tourism products require large amounts of information, this is supported within a conventional elementary marketing text. 

Second, information technology (IT) will always be able to cope with the changing demand of tourists toward more frequent, but shorter travel, last-minute reservations, quality of information and service, market transparency, and tailored holidays.

This may be true but it is dependant on their being people up-dating much of this information, and the actual processes within the business, outside that of simply the computer for co-ordinating all these factors.

Three crucial aspects can be identified that seem to be essential for the success of tourism information systems; these are quality of access, quality of content, and ability to customize the whole system.

Few could argue that this isn't correct, but the problem remains that these will differ on the individual person that is surfing the site depending on their amount of experience on the internet, what their competitors are offering and an array of other factors that all contribute to the benchmark that is set by the site user. 

It is not feasible to store all the information a tourist might be interested in at one Web site, neither in terms of storage costs nor, more important, in terms of maintenance overheads. Therefore it is important for web sites to contain useful links.

The danger with this is of course checking that the information is in fact reputable and completely correct. If by chance there is an error within the link, it is very likely that the consumer could hold blame the original company for putting them onto that web site. In addition to this, constant checks must be made in order to insure that the link is still working correctly, because if the address changes or the site closes down, it will decrease the quality of the company's web site.

However, on the other side of the coin, this comment is entirely correct, it would be too costly to set-up and maintain, therefore the solution would be to use a link to a site such as a government ran tourism information web-site. 

The aim of TIScover is twofold:

First, tourists should be supplied with comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date tourism information on countries, regions, villages, and all destination facilities they offer, such as hotels, museums, or other sights. Second, it aims to attract the tourist to buy certain tourism products either offline or, if possible, online. Regarding the top 100 most frequently accessed travel sites, TIScover Austria was already ranked in the top 10, above international companies such as American Airlines, Hyatt, Hertz, or American Express (100hot Travel 1999). Currently, per month, TIScover Austria has to handle up to 11.5 million pageviews, 2.6 million visits, and as many as 40,000 requests for information and online bookings.

These figures demonstrate the importance for countries to have an overall search engine in order help direct interest internet users to reputable and informative sites within the country without many of the irrelevant web sites that are displayed with a standard web search. Combine this with the fact that it has background/ general information for the country, and also allows advanced searches by regions etc. this system has helped to re-define what is expected by consumers. 

TIScover can be accessed at any time, from anywhere, simply via cellular phones. With this, the tourist is able to get topical information about weather forecasts, avalanche conditions, and snow reports.

The most important thing here are the processes that are in place behind the computer system. Without the up-dating of weather information regularly, it will be useless.

Operators can post pages on the TIScover web site.

This begs the question do the sites get checked before they are uploaded onto the main TIScover site. If this isn't the case then there is the danger that it may lower the reputation of the overall site.

The phases that user’s go through are:

 * The Information Phase:

* The Negotiation Phase

* The Settlement Phase

Within the article, discussion takes place on the processes that consumer's pass through when purchasing. The value of this was limited because despite the fact it happens on the internet, they identified no new points that wouldn't be relevant within a standard consumer behaviour framework.