The Role of Architecture on Tourism Industry

This chapter aims to shed light on the nature of architecture, its technological and cultural ramifications on tourism industry. It elucidates the background of issues regarding the interaction between the fields of cultural production (architecture) and cultural consumption (tourism). The chapter argues that power of tourism industry has reached, under the pressure of global economics, to a capacity to turn even daily architecture into instruments of touristic show. In this context, technology is utilized as an instrument to produce such iconography only as a surface articulation. Thus, architecture becomes a commodity of touristic consumption in this current socio-economic and cultural context. The pressure of tourism industry seems to create a significant split between the architecture and its location in terms of specific cultural roots. This tendency is discussed as a potential threat to sustainability of tourism industry itself since it damages its own very source, that is to say, richness of cultural differences.

New Approaches for Managing Tourism Complexity

This chapter’s main objective is to provide a new conceptualization of the tourism which has major implications for management approaches, business models and strategy techniques of the sector. The objective is to try to reconcile the complexity of the environment with the managerial techniques and strategies that aim to create sustainable competitive advantage. The author will begin with a review of tourism characteristics of supply and demand side. Then they will analyze the paradigm shifts that are taking place overall in the new economy and the main challenges they bring on in the tourism context. Subsequently, they will discuss the need to realize a shift in tourism conceptualization and management in itself. The author will move their focus of analysis away from traditional, mechanical views of tourism to dynamic approaches that take into account the behavior of the overall system and help identify key leverage points of change and transformation.

Supporting and Promoting Tourism Network Systems through ICT Applications

Furthermore, the authors, hope that from the assumptions and the insights of the studies reported will follow a high spread of the concept of DMSs considered as a significant contribution for developing strong innovative patterns of collaboration in Tourism Industry.

Internet in Marketing Strategy in Greek Tourism Industry

The web tourists have the chance to do comparative e – travel shopping from suppliers from all over the world fast and easily. Based on this assumption, the purpose of this study is to examine whether internet is a powerful communicational tool for people over the other forms of gathering information for a destination. Furthermore a main objective is to identify whether the available information in the web can promote adequately Greece. Results of the study confirmed that internet is a powerful communicational tool in tourism industry, as per young people’s perspectives. However, booking a holiday through the web might be tricky for an inexperienced user. The negative aspects of e –bookings are the factors that reinforce the validity of the other sources of information.

Advanced Technologies and Tourism Behaviour

The current chapter provides an overview of the most advanced technologies for tourism sector, with emphasis on pervasive environments, which represent innovative systems based on an efficient integration of Virtual Reality (VR) and affective world. The aim is to show how tourism industry might exploit the current advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), such as VR, web-based technologies, mobile devices, etc., to catch tourists’ attention and gain competitive advantages over competitors. In particular, these technologies are capable of promoting touristic destination in a global perspective and affect potential tourist decision-making process, by investigating the main characteristics and possible integrations. Moreover, especially pervasive environments are efficient tools to entertain and attract tourists’ interest, by showing potential destinations in an innovative and exciting way capable of influencing users’ decision-making process. In addition, this chapter outlines the possible implications for both marketers and tourists.

Creating Digital Heritage Content

In this chapter, the authors focus their attention on an often overlooked aspect of digital heritage content, namely by whom how, and with what purpose such content is created. The authors evaluate digital materials that are anthropological and archaeological in nature, both digitized archives and newly created materials. In their work and efforts to understand and represent different cultural perspectives, they have encountered differences in cultural knowledge systems that have shown the need for cross-cultural consultation and communication as an essential first step in the creation of digital content for new systems of representation and knowledge transfer. Their efforts focus on developing a new educational framework that allows for knowledge exchange at different levels and between different entities, challenging the perpetuating hierarchical relationships between community and experts.

A Study on Development Strategies of Tourism Cultural and Creative Industry

Nowadays tourism activities tend to be increasingly personalized and diversified. Tourism industrial chain can be enriched and the development of tourism industry can be diversified when cultural and creative elements are added to tourism fields. This study takes cultural and creative tourism as the theme, and studies the characteristics and planning framework of cultural and creative tourism, and finally put forward development strategies of tourism cultural and creative industry including building tourism creative zone, combining tourism image slogan with creative elements, emphasizing creative design and marketing in terms of traveling souvenirs, adding the creative elements to tourism festivals and activities, developing tourism market through popular film and television hot spots and performance arts, innovating through combining tourism and other states of matter.

Museum or Mausoleum?

Web 2.0 offers exciting possibilities and challenges for extending the museum visit, engaging new visitors and attracting distant audiences. However, the digital media technologies that enable distributed, shared and user/novice-generated audiovisual content can be deployed by experts in other fruitful ways to augment and rejuvenate actual visits to interpretation centres. Going beyond the e-guide, integrated audiovisual media can offer original new visions of ancient cultures, bring intangible as well as physical heritage to the museum, and make exploring it a lively and vivid contemporary experience. Developing and exhibiting original digital art to make the museum visit more dynamic requires new ways of researching, funding, supporting and curating exhibitions. This chapter contextualizes and reviews two recent European case-studies which aim to enhance the museum visit, noting how they were funded and developed, commenting on these approaches and reviewing how improved infrastructures might support attractive, revitalising, dynamic vision in the future

A Study on Tourist Management in China Based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a non-contact, automatic identification technology. Through its radio frequency signal, RFID offers automatic target recognition and access to relevant and without human intervention identification of work is made. RFID can work in various environments. It can identify fast moving objects and is capable of identifying multiple tags, in a rapid and convenient operation. Since the 1990s, RFID technology has been widely used in commercial, logistics, property management and other fields, but interest towards potential application to the needs of the tourism industry only began in recent years.

Service Design

Service design is establishing itself as a method for developing services and service business. Service needs, new ideas and ways to utilise technology are encountered when the customer and the end user participate in the design process. This chapter focuses on service design methods and the process of how service design can help in innovating customer-orientated service concepts for e-tourism. Service design connects the areas of cultural, social and human interaction. Use of design methods acts as a link between the different views in the service design process. Service design is an emerging field where the terminology and methods are still developing. Mager (2009) has pointed out that the need for service design is evident, as economic development has changed dramatically during the last four decades from manufacturing to provision of information and services. Service design looks at service development from the designer’s point of view. Design thinking has the ability to create concepts, solutions and future service experiences for users.