Intelligent Systems for Tourism

or Just Resting? " This is the title of a recent call for papers for the Journal of IT Theory and Application. The special issue aims to discuss the problems of unfulfilled business forecasts and related stock market plunges. However, despite these problems , online transactions are increasing— at least in some sectors, such as the travel and tourism industry. In fact, tourism is the leading application in the B2C (business to consumer) arena. Although the slow economy and current political developments have negatively influenced e-commerce, it is still flourishing in the tourism sector. In the first quarter of 2002, travel and tourism accounted for a total turnover of approximately US$7 billion—an increase of 87 percent from the same quarter in 2001 (see www.comscore.com/news/ online_travel_q1_041602.htm). Consumers made 46.7 million hotel reservations worldwide in 2001, netting US$12.9 billion in revenue, according to the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (see www.hedna.org). In addition, 32 percent of US travelers this year have used the Internet to book travel arrangements (see www.nua.com/surveys/index. cgi?f=VS&art_id=905357908&rel=true), and further growth is expected. The tourism industry has specific features that explain its importance for economic (regional) development and its inclination toward IT systems. 1 Tourism is a leading industry worldwide , representing approximately 11 percent of the worldwide GDP (according to the World Travel & Tourism Coun-cil's tourism satellite account method 1). There will be approximately one billion international arrivals in the year 2010 (according to the World Tourism Organization , www.world-tourism.org). Furthermore , tourism represents a cross-sector (umbrella) industry, including many related economic sectors such as culture, sports, and agriculture, where over 30 different industrial components have been identified that serve travelers. In addition, tourism greatly influences regional development, owing to its SME (small-and medium-sized enterprises) structure and relatively small entrance barriers. For example, in the European Union, the hotel and restaurant sector accounts for more than 1.3 million enterprises. This is approximately 8.5 percent of the total number of enterprises, and 95.5 percent of these enterprises are small (with one to nine employees). 2 Also, because tourism is based on mobility, the supply and demand side forms a worldwide network, where production and distribution are based on cooperation. In addition, it is an information based industry, so the tourism product is a confidence good, where at the moment of decision-making, only information about the product—not the product itself—is available. The problem with these statistics is that they …