National online tourism policy initiatives for Australia
Journal of Travel Research; Boulder; Nov 2000; Pramod Sharma; Dean Carson; Terry DeLacy;

Abstract:
Australia has a history of public sector policy initiatives designed to encourage economic development. Tourism is seen as a key industry for economic development, and the perceived benefits of online technologies for tourism have led to a strong role within the policy context for encouraging technology uptake. There has been some concern on the part of the Australian government that a lack of a national policy to this point means that full benefits to the industry of the online technologies may not have been realized. As a result, the government initiated a program of research and industry consultation in 1999 to develop a national online tourism policy. This process identified five key initiatives that were to form the foundation of an online tourism policy. It is expected that implementation of these initiatives as part of a national online tourism policy will advance the goal of achieving a sustainable tourism industry for Australia.

[Headnote]
The benefits of online technologies for the tourism industry include increased efficiencies in communications, research, marketing, financial transactions, and enterprise management. Australia has a history of public sector policy initiatives designed to encourage economic development. Tourism is seen as a key industry for economic development, and the perceived benefits of online technologies for tourism have led to a strong role within the policy context for encouraging technology uptake. There has been some concern on the part of the Australian government that a lack of a national policy to this point means that full benefits to the industry of the online technologies may not have been realized. As a result, the government initiated a program of research and industry consultation in 1999 to develop a national online tourism policy. This process identified five key initiatives that were to form the foundation of an online tourism policy. It is expected that implementation of these initiatives as part of a national online tourism policy will advance the goal of achieving a sustainable tourism industry for Australia.

Online technologies have had important impacts on communications and transactions between the following: the tourism industry and its consumers, different parts of the industry, the industry and its regulators and facilitators, and even different consumers (for comprehensive state-of-theindustry overviews, see Sheldon 1997; O'Connor 1999; Werthner and Klein 1999; World Tourism Organisation [WTO] 1999). New players have entered the industry, mainly associated with information technology companies rather than with traditional tourism industry companies. These new players have had the knowledge and capacity to implement technologies to facilitate online tourism and have formed strategic alliances with other intermediaries and producers to meet content needs.

Traditionally, the multiple steps in the distribution chain have affected the speed at which information flows from producer to consumer (Holloway 1998). The emergence of online technologies has resulted in heightened expectations of what is considered up-to-date information, and all players in the distribution chain will have to get used to demands for faster, more accessible processes of communication. Impacts on the distribution chain have not been so much in terms of major changes in the players but in the mechanisms used to link players. The players under threat are those who do not respond to the introduction of these mechanisms. New players in the chain will be those who are capable of providing the new processes. Existing players will need to develop the skills to use new processes and understand their effects on their business models, and to remain competitive, they might have to form alliances with new players. All players in the chain will need to recognize the global nature of business investment and that new processes mean that destinations are not just competing for tourists globally but also for investment and infrastructure.

Tourism in Australia is an estimated AU$60 billion industry ($45 billion domestic, $15 billion international; Buchanan 1999). It is important at the national and state levels but is of particular importance to the development of Australia's regional and rural communities (including Indigenous communities). Development of online tourism in Australia has occurred in a variety of industry sectors, players, and geographic regions (Daniele 1998). Systems of information storage and distribution have developed largely independently, and there is evidence that significant segments of industry have not taken up the opportunities available. The structure of the industry has also made it difficult for individual enterprises to financially support macrolevel promotion and distribution efforts. It can be argued that a situation of market failure exists and that there is a strong case for a national online tourism policy to facilitate an environment that enables the industry to maintain its key role in the economy.

The genesis of this article can be traced to the Australian government's desire to develop a coherent policy for online tourism. To this end, the Australian government through its Office of National Tourism (ONT) commissioned the authors to research and report on the state of online tourism in Australia. The research and consultation program included working with the National Forum for Online Tourism (NFOT) (a consultative unit made up of key players in the Australian tourism and information technology industries). The main output of this process (a report titled Meeting the Challenge) and in particular its five recommendations were extensively analyzed and debated at 16 tourism industry workshops throughout the country. The outcome of these workshops and the report itself were then subjected to a final review by the NFOT before being transmitted to the ONT for consideration in policy formulation. The official policy will be announced by the government in June 2000. This article advances and discusses the five key initiatives as building blocks on which a national online tourism policy will be based.

POLICY INSTITUTIONAL AND REGULATORY CONTEXT

Australia is a large country with a small population (approximately 18.3 million people in an area approximately 95% of mainland United States). While the bulk of this population is concentrated in the larger metropolitan centers, about one-third is dispersed in regional and rural Australia, essentially over the whole continent. This poses obvious problems for development of infrastructure and maintenance of services. Over the past few decades, there has been a decline in world commodity prices, and the resulting structural shifts in the Australian economy have given certain urgency to government intervention in rural areas in particular. State and federal governments see tourism as an economic driver to counter declining regional and rural economies. Tourism is also seen as a panacea for the low economic status of rural and remote Indigenous communities (Department of Industry, Science and Technology [DIST] 1997). Finally, as most of regional and rural tourism enterprises are small business (more than 90% as estimated in recent surveys; DeLacy 2000), the protourism policy is also a pro-small business policy. The proliferation of small businesses in the industry provides additional incentive for government intervention to assist development (DIST 1998b).

Government involvement in the tourism industry is not recent; indeed, a feature of the Australian tourism industry is the key role played by the federal and state governments in supporting and developing the industry. This includes developing legislative and policy frameworks, destination marketing, and ensuring that tourism development supports broad economic, environmental, and sociocultural imperatives. Consequently, it is not surprising to see various governments expressing a significant interest in the existing and potential impact of online technologies on the development, marketing, and distribution of Australian tourism product. The resulting regulatory environment and public sector initiatives are among key factors that influence uptake of online technologies (Werthner and Klein 1999).

In 1998, the federal government released Tourism: A Ticket to the 21st Century (DIST 1998b), its National Action Plan for the tourism industry. The National Action Plan identified three objectives to ensure that all parts of the tourism distribution chain have better access to better quality information about Australia and that the Australian product is developed in a high-quality, accessible manner. In 1998, an online economy policy statement was also released. A Strategic Framework for the Information Economy (DIST 1998a) was intended "to ensure that the lives, work and well being of Australians are enriched, jobs are created, and the national wealth is advanced, through the participation of all Australians in the growing information economy" (p. 5). The framework identified strategic priorities to action the mission and called for government, industry, and the community to respond to the strategic priorities with appropriate action plans. The framework recognized the potential for the tourism industry to serve as a leader in online innovations.

In addition to the federal government's policy framework, each state and territory government has adopted tourism development plans (e.g., see Tourism New South Wales 1996; TTAS 1999). There are a number of similarities between these plans:

* a focus on government role in destination marketing,

* an emphasis on regional and rural industry development,

* identification of the use of information technology to help further tourism development objectives (see Daniele, Mistilis, and Ward [2000] for key characteristics of these systems), and

* the desire to position individual state/territory product on a domestic and international scale; the latter can be seen as competing with the federal government funded Australian Tourist Commission (ATC), which has the marketing of Australia overseas as its main role.

Excluding occasional "bursts of cooperation" (e.g., as in the case of Partnership Australia's National Tourism Data Warehouse (NTDW) projects, discussed later in this article), the six states and the two territories see each other largely as competitors. The advent of online tourism is unlikely to change this political reality and is a structural coordination issue that has to be addressed in formulating a national policy. (For a discussion of the difficulties involved-both technical and organizational-in integrating these state-based systems, see Daniele, Mistilis, and Ward 2000.)

Finally, it should be noted that while federal, state, and territory governments have been interventionist and have recorded significant achievements with regard to the tourism industry, this has not been without debate. The debate stems from two sources:

1. a philosophical position that opposes all government intervention (let the market decide) and

2. a concern from within the industry (usually expressed by political lobbying) in having publicly funded initiatives as commercial competitors; this view is not opposed to government intervention in areas that are beneficial to the industry, for example, the expectation that the government "should be doing something about the bandwidth problem" in regional and rural Australia.

MAJOR COMPONENTS OF AN ONLINE TOURISM POLICY

The broader Australian tourism research issues have been discussed elsewhere (e.g., DeLacy and Boyd 2000; Tourism Council of Australia [TCA] 1999). Our comments here are restricted to the subject of online tourism: there are many areas in which research is required to underpin policy development, to ensure that the Australian tourism industry takes advantage of the new opportunities. These include legal issues (identify the specific implications for the tourism industry of legal issues surrounding e-commerce), consumer information (investigate the information needs of Internet consumers to ensure that initiatives are designed appropriately), and evaluative research (research into the effectiveness of particular site designs, systems, strategies, networks, consumer-consumer sites, and so on).

Considerable research and system development is already underway in Australia in these and in related areas (a selection of these is documented in the next section). There was an identified need to document these developments and to develop a wider framework within which some of the existing and the required research could be cast in such a way as to assist the development of a national policy. The research and industry consultation that was undertaken included (1) an analysis of federal and state government policy frameworks, (2) an analysis of existing and emerging online tourism initiatives and trends, (3) identification of impacts of online technologies, and (4) identification of impediments to the industry adopting online technologies. This process identified five broad areas in which national-level policy initiatives were required. These initiatives

* enhance the national data infrastructure for tourism,

* develop a national online tourism resource center,

* develop regional tourism initiatives,

* empower intermediaries, and

* develop an Indigenous tourism online strategy.

The remainder of this article summarizes the existing policy context of each initiative. It also identifies key current industry developments and impediments to further developments, the combination of which has led to these five initiatives' being assigned priority in the national policy development exercise. It should be noted that the exercise undertaken did not begin with a clean slate or have as its objective a large scale government involvement either in financial or in legislative terms. The exercise adopted a short- to medium-term view of I to 3 years and focused on identifying gaps, achieving integration, and providing a development environment for the uptake on online technologies.

Enhancing National Data Infrastructure for Tourism

The Australian tourism industry is not unique in having a two-tiered structure (Werthner 1996) in which Tier 1 is made of a small number of large, often global, players, and Tier 2 is made up of a much larger collection of small and medium tourism enterprises (SMTEs). Larger players are well versed in current management practices, including information technology applications. In contrast, Tier 2 enterprises have mostly limited technological infrastructure and financial power, the level of marketing know-how is generally low, and direct access to the market is limited. In Australia, they also tend to be in regional and rural areas.

Large enterprises in the Australian tourism industry have a long history of using information and communications technologies (Daniele 1998). Large enterprises are keen to facilitate the uptake of online technologies because they have a critical mass of infrastructure, personnel, and related experience to undertake this transition. These enterprises are generally high up the distribution chain and undertake a large percentage of their communication with other businesses in the chain; hence, they are primarily concerned with business-tobusiness applications for online technologies. Many of these initiatives are global, rather than specifically Australian. They involve information exchange, inventory management, and alliance facilitation. In most cases (e.g., Travel Industry Automation Systems' association with GALILEO and SABRE GDS, and ATLAS Technologies' association with the AMADEUS GDS), Australian enterprises have piggybacked major international initiatives. While most of these efforts have tended to focus on the international tourism market, some significant domestic market initiatives also have been undertaken, the chief being the joint venture effort by all state- and territory-motoring organizations to develop a national online accommodation and touring information database; the product is essentially an integrated online version of the various state-motoring tour guidebooks (CRC Tourism 1999a).

Many public sector online initiatives can also be regarded as activities of the "big players" of Australian tourism industry. Chief among these are the various information systems developed by statutory tourism agencies such as the ATC and the state and territory tourism organizations. Indeed, the achievement has been impressive even when judged against best international benchmarks (Kirkgoze and Tjoa 1998; Tunnard and Haines 1999; Werthner and Klein 1999; WTO 1999). A recent development-the Partnership Australia program-serves to illustrate the point. Partnership Australia is a strategic alliance between the state and territory tourism authorities and the ATC to better market Australia overseas. As part of this alliance, an NTDW is being developed. It is envisaged that the NTDW will combine all the information from the states- and territories-destination databases into a common format in a centralized location where distributors will access it for distribution through their channels (Daniele, Mistilis, and Ward 2000). A "domestic version" of the data warehouse is also being developed.

There are other significant government online initiatives. Among these are the ONT's TwinShare: Tourism Accommodation and the Environment site (DIST 1999) and the TRAIN (CRC Tourism 1999b) and Tourism Business Information Facility (TBIF) projects from CRC Tourism. (The TBIF project is similar, in some respects, to the Austrian TourMIS, the Canadian CTX, and the Spanish DATATUR projects, in that it is aimed at providing business and research information rather than at product- or destination-marketing information; Sharma, Carson, and DeLacy 2000.) Online information is also provided by major government providers of industryoriented information such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics (1999) (http://www.abs.gov.au/) and the Bureau of Tourism Research (http://www.btr.gov.au/). The Electronic Travel Authority System (which issues travel visas online through travel agents, airline reservations systems, or Australian government offices) is an example of innovation in government and consumer transactions (Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 1999).

Thus, while the various efforts have contributed toward an industry data infrastructure, many problems remain. While the creation of a centralized and comprehensive national tourism database remains a quest in some quarters, the reality for the foreseeable future is that there will be several databases of varying scope that have been created either by governments or by government funding, and by various proprietary private sector efforts. Thus, instead of a coordinated effort toward the development of a national data infrastructure for tourism, the situation is one of "islands of information" existing in varying degrees of isolation; not all of these islands can be connected! Research by Partnership Australia, for example, has raised significant database issues of comprehensiveness, product classification standards, and quality assurance (Daniele, Mistilis, and Ward 2000).

The development of a national data infrastructure for tourism would be advanced more effectively if a high degree of compatibility among existing and proposed systems could be instituted. (The technical difficulties faced by the Partnership Australia projects in integrating eight reasonable quality databases should be justification enough; this, of course, is not ignoring political issues raised by a federal structure of government.) Compatibility would allow separate development but also would allow sharing of information across systems if necessary. A coordinating step in this direction would be the development of a high-level data model, the National Tourism Information Model (NTIM). (For a generic data model for tourism industry, see Kung, Dunzendorfer, and Wagner 1999.) This model would provide the basis for

1. developing product classification standards,

2. cataloging what data is available,

3. identifying gaps in data availability, and

4. developing strategies for collecting data that are currently not available.

It would also provide a strong rationale for developing industry data standards. This would be a particularly useful development as although systems at the national level (e.g., the ATC) and the state tourism level (e.g., Tourism Queensland) are well developed, systems for the next level (regional tourism authorities) containing approximately 70% of tourism enterprises are almost totally undeveloped. As these grassroots agencies are of considerable interest now-among other things-as originators of content for the NTDW, any new significant data collection effort should be based on agreed data standards.

A preliminary data model has been developed by the authors in association with some key players in the industry. A preliminary NTIM has been developed by identifying core entities, their domains and subjects, and the relationships involved (Carson and Sharma 1999). The NTIM identifies five core entities: person, activity, product, organization, and location. Each entity has subentities; for example, information may be collected about a person in their role as a visitor, resident, or employee. Domains are the broad classifications information for each entity. Domains for person include demography, socioculture, and economy. Each domain includes a number of subjects, which are more specific descriptions of information for the entity. Subjects are aspects of the domain to which they belong. The model continues to subsubject levels to identify specific fields for inclusion in a data structure (e.g., male and female are fields for the sex subject in demography domain for the person entity).

National Online Tourism Resource Centre

While the uptake of online technologies by the Australian tourism industry has been quite extensive, there are significant impediments to further uptake, especially by SMTEs in regional and rural areas (CRC Tourism 1999a). Many of the impediments to realizing the benefits of online tourism are global in nature (cost of uptake, nature of the market, technology, and content and design issues), while there are some that are particularly relevant to the Australian industry (role of government and establishing a sustainable rate of uptake). Technical and cost issues are likely to be resolved as technologies mature, while market, design, and government role issues need to be more directly addressed.

There is a clear concern that the impediments discussed above, singly or in some combination, will hinder if not prevent many tourism enterprises from participating in the online economy. Even in a more optimistic scenario, the industry could experience considerable reinventing-the-wheel type of activities, a considerable and avoidable business risk for SMTEs in particular. Much of this could be avoided if the SMTEs had access to industry best practices, how-to guides, and the general sharing of information about online tourism (TCA 1999, p. 9). As such, there is a need to establish a resource center to develop education, training, and facilitative projects to support the move to online business practices. The resource center needs to be focused on the tourism industry to ensure that tourism specific issues are addressed.

The responsibilities of the National Online Tourism Resource Center will include

* maintaining a resource directory, including a directory of high-standard examples, to be accessed by industry for identifying opportunities and impediments to the uptake of online technologies;

* assisting industry associations to promote online technology among their members, including organizing and conducting workshops;

* developing national competency standards in online technologies (a discussion on expected competencies is found in Daniele and Mistilis 1999);

* developing a set of guidelines for minimum infrastructure needs for online business practices;

* monitoring and providing information about tax and legal issues relating to online tourism initiatives; and

* undertaking applied research and data gathering about the most effective online strategies for SMTEs.

While the resource center will be online, it will have to be supported by considerable offline activities in its initial phases.

Regional Tourism Initiatives

We noted earlier that recent structural shifts in the economy have given a certain urgency to government involvement in the tourism industry. State and federal governments see tourism as an economic driver to counter declining commodity prices and increased economic instability, particularly in regional and rural areas. However, while the intention is clear-to support development of rural and regional economic base-there is some confusion as to what is an effective and sustainable way of promoting tourism in rural and regional Australia. It appears that both macrolevel (e.g., improving communications including bandwidth problems) and microlevel (e.g., enterprise improvement) initiatives may be necessary.

Given the two-tiered structure of Australian tourism industry and the problems posed by its geography, a key element in a national online tourism policy is the development of online initiatives by regional tourism authorities (including important tourism activities conducted by local governments; McKercher and Ritchie 1997). This action is required despite the very successful operations of the ATC in representing Australia overseas and the efforts of various state tourism organizations in representing their states in the domestic and international markets. These initiatives would be directed primarily toward digitizing the large base of regional and rural SMTEs. (For a discussion along similar lines for the European context, see Buhalis 1999.)

Regional tourism initiatives are driven by the need to maximize marketing penetrations for the region and its product, facilitate the entry of local enterprises into e-commerce (where appropriate), and demonstrate comprehensiveness of coverage of product in the region, whether or not individual products have independent online presence. As regional tourism represents the base layer of the national data infrastructure, there is a need to maintain high quality and compatibility with systems at higher levels; they will have to be compatible with data models endorsed by the relevant state tourism organization and the NTIM. The initiatives will have to show a clear understanding of, and have mechanisms to address content, design, and cost issues (Weeks and Crouch 1999). Regional tourism initiatives will by necessity focus on SMTEs (Centre for Regional Tourism Research 1999).

Empowering Intermediaries

The intention of online technologies has been to streamline distribution channels so that industry functions are more cost effective. There are some limitations regarding the nature of the product, which can be directly distributed. For example, point-to-point travel and standardized tour packages are relatively easy to provide over the Internet compared with more flexible tour packages and experiences for the free and independent traveler, which involve more flexible, multiple supplier arrangements. The increased capacity for direct sales of major travel products, such as air transport, package tours, and accommodation where producers are well known to their clients, has already resulted in falling commissions for intermediaries from these sources (Standing, Vasudavan, and Borbely 1998). In Australia, air transport is currently dominated by two companies, and it is not difficult for travelers to locate and validate information about air transport product directly through the supplier. For many other products, however, the range of producers is much greater, and dealing with each producer individually is much more difficult. This is also true of the majority of tourism transactions, which include the purchase of different products from a range of producers, hence the role of the travel agent as an intermediary.

The future for intermediaries includes helping consumers trawl through the vast range of available information providing consumers with skills to use online technologies, providing consumers with access to online technologies, and providing information validation, quality assurance, and secure financial transaction capacities. Two points are apparent: (1) the shift to online sales is likely to be a relatively progressive change, and (2) the role of intermediaries will change, and new opportunities (including fee for service) will emerge. In Australia, this means that key intermediary industry associations (Australian Federation of Travel Agents [AFTA], Inbound Tour Operators of Australia) have adequate time to develop training and adjustment strategies to facilitate appropriate uptake of online technologies in this sector.

There has been considerable discussion and debate on intermediaries and the issue of disintermediation. Recently, the issue has been addressed in terms of adaptation and positioning strategies to new technologies in travel and tourism (Bedard 2000). As the advent of online technologies has an impact on the distribution chain, a national online policy has to address this issue; although to the extent that the situation can be seen as a consequence of the operation of market forces, the matter is more for the industry rather than the government. In the Australian context (and elsewhere), an online business strategy for the intermediaries sector has to address three issues:

1. developing an exit strategy for those who wish to leave the industry (e.g., AFTA; the national organization for travel agents can develop and disseminate failure-risk profiles; generic models with different impact scenarios are available; Werthner and Klein 2000);

2. identifying new opportunities that may be online transaction based but that the agent can "value-add"; this may include changing the structure of the travel agency (Bedard 2000); and

3. developing a professional development program to address the need to provide information about emerging opportunities and impediments for travel agents and develop recognized skills acquisition as an important adjustment mechanism for their members.

Indigenous Product Online

There is considerable demand from international visitors for authentic Indigenous tourism experiences (DIST 1997). This demand has gone largely unfulfilled. Consequently, there is interest from Indigenous people to harness tourism for community development. There is also concern from Indigenous people about how their culture is portrayed by the tourism industry. The remote and geographically dispersed nature of many Indigenous communities lends importance to quick and effective communication to support development initiatives. For all these reasons, online technologies offer enormous opportunities for development of authentic and culturally sensitive Indigenous tourism (Pitcher, van Oosterzee, and Palmer 1999).

However, before this can happen, there is need for research: cultural and social protocols for online representations of Indigenous product, the positioning of Indigenous tourism product within any national tourism product database, infrastructure needs of remote communities, and training needs for personnel. While infrastructure and training needs are significant for all Tier 2 suppliers of tourism product in Australia, the unique cultural context associated with Indigenous product and the encouragement by government and Indigenous organizations for this sector to be opened up (DIST 1997; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission 1997) means that special attention should be paid to programs in this area (Elu 1996).

CONCLUSION

A national online tourism strategy for Australia will be released by the federal government in August 2000. The strategy has emerged from research and industry consultation conducted over the past 18 months into the nature of the tourism industry in Australia, with particular reference to its capacity to access the benefits of online technologies. While a range of benefits has been identified in communications, research, marketing, financial transactions, and enterprise management, significant impediments to accessing these benefits have also been highlighted. The tourism industry in Australia is dominated by small businesses and rural and regional attractions. Lack of infrastructure and a relatively narrow focus of industry players at the "big end of town" has led to market failure in terms of developing infrastructure and maintaining services. Consequently, the federal government has assumed a leadership role in encouraging uptake of online technologies. This role is consistent with its economic development policies and is mirrored by state government initiatives.

This article has analyzed the justification for a national online tourism policy focusing on five key initiatives: enhancing the national data infrastructure for tourism, developing a national online tourism resource center, developing regional tourism initiatives, empowering intermediaries, and developing an Indigenous tourism online strategy. These initiatives have a high potential for success as they essentially consolidate existing trends and provide the basis for further adoption and innovation. These initiatives have received broad support from public and private sector; however, there is some concern about the distinction between government as a facilitator of development and government as a competitor to the private sector.

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[Author note]
Pramod Sharma, Director IT R&D Program; Dean Carson, Senior Research Fellow; and Terry DeLacy, CEO, are members of the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism. The program is based at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 4072; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: www.crctourism.com.au