ECOCLUB, Issue 90
5
FEATURE
WEB 2.0 in the tourism industry: A new tourism generation and new e-business models
by Dr Marianna Sigala*
During the last years, we are experiencing the mushrooming and increased use of web tools enabling Internet users to both
create and distribute content (multimedia information). These tools referred to as Web 2.0 technologies-applications can be
considered as the tools of mass collaboration, since they empower Internet users to actively participate and simultaneously
collaborate with other Internet users for producing, consuming and diffusing the information and knowledge being distributed
through the Internet. In other words, Web 2.0 tools do nothing more than realising and exploiting the full potential of the
genuine concept and role of the Internet (i.e. the network of the networks that is created and exists for its users). The content and
information generated by users of Web 2.0 technologies are having a tremendous impact not only on the profile, expectations
and decision making behaviour of Internet users, but also on e-business model that businesses need to develop and/or adapt. The
tourism industry is not an exception from such developments. On the contrary, as information is the lifeblood of the tourism
industry the use and diffusion of Web 2.0 technologies have a substantial impact of both tourism demand and supply. Indeed,
many new types of tourism cyber-intermediaries have been created that are nowadays challenging the e-business model of
existing cyberintermediaries that only few years ago have been threatening the existence of intermediaries!. In this vein, the
purpose of this article is to analyse the major applications of Web 2.0 technologies in the tourism and hospitality industry by
presenting their impact on both demand and supply.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
RSS feeds allow people to subscribe to online distributions of news, blogs, podcasts, or other information. By doing so, one
does not have to visit each individual website that he/she is interesting to read any new information, but rather the RSS feeds all
new updated information to the users’ RSS reader. RSS readers enable Internet users to consolidate and read all new
information that is customised to the profile within one consolidated message. Many free RSS exist on the Internet, e.g.
FeedDemon, NewsGator, Rojo, software on the website of Google, MyYahoo etc.
Impact on tourism demand
RSS feeders saves information search time for Internet users as well as have a major impact on they information is nowadays
being distributed on the Internet.
Impact on tourism supply
Many tourism enterprises and suppliers have adopted and incorporated RSS feeds in their websites in order to benefit from the
following issues:
Keep a communication with their customers such as sending them Newsletters. However, RSS is an information
distribution technology that is characterised as a demand pull rather than a supply push model.
RSS helps companies enhance their Search engines Optimisation. This is because RSS helps in creating inbound links
to a company’s website as well as RSS can also be used for informing search engines whenever new content is
uploaded on a website so that they can index it.
Blogs (or Weblogs)
Blogs are a form of an online journal (newspaper or personal diary) that is published on a website and are usually distributed
through RSS and/or trackback technologies (these inform the creator of a comment that someone has “replied” and/or linked to
his/her contribution). Blogs are a type of a newspaper as information published on them is presented chronological and it can be
related to either a very general topic (travel in general) or a very specific topic (cycling tourism in Germany). Numerous
examples of general and-or specific blogs exist in the tourism industry, such as tripadvisor.com, hotelchatter.com, igougo.com,
gazetters.com (a B2B weblog for travel agents). Anyone can create a weblog by using a free software offered for free at several
websites nowadays (e.g. Google) and he/she can use it for publishing text, images, links to other blogs, Webpages, audio and
video files. Weblogs are becoming very important tools affecting information search since their links, content and popularity
can dictate the position of a company on a search engine search. Many travellers – tourists are using weblogs as fun and-or as a
way of self expression.
Impact on tourism demand
Weblogs are becoming a very important information source for international travellers for getting travel advice and suggestions
of tourism suppliers. Weblogs have the power of the impartial information and the e-word-of-mouth that is diffusing online like
a virus. Moreover, it is very likely that when reading and sharing one’s travel experience through weblogs, this also creates the
willingness to travel and visit the same destination or suppliers to other as well. Indeed, when reading users’ responses to travel
weblogs it is very evident to see that user generated content has a similar AIDA effect to other users as paid advertisements aim
to do. Specifically, weblog’s content can: 1) Attract the attention, eyeballs of other Internet users and increase traffic on a
website, 2) create Interest to users who can now seek more and additional information, 3) develop someone’s desire to also visit
a destination and/or buy the product and 4) foster an Action (e.g. book a hotel or organise a trip to a destination). Of course, it
should be noted that the power of Weblogs can also be negative, i.e. spread a bad experience of a tourist to million of online
Internet users. Therefore, it is very important that tourism companies establish a corporate policy regarding by whom and how
both negative as well as positive users’ comments on weblogs are responded to.
