The Virtual Dimension in Tourism: Criteria Catalogue for the Assessment of eTourism Applications

Digitalisation can be viewed as the motor of transformation for the tourism industry in the age of the internet economy. While the increase of digitalised or completely virtualised products in tourism reflects this development, current eTourism applications are rather fragmented with regards to conceptualisation, structure and layout. However, in the increasing competitive internet economy, a systematic and methodical comparison of heterogeneous eTourism applications as a foundation for future developments is quintessential. This paper presents a classification scheme that is developed in the form of a criteria catalogue with a unified rating for assessment. The suggested criteria catalogue was tested on real cases resulting in a preliminary international benchmarking.