Management Information Systems and Information Technology in Tourism and Travel Organizations3/17/2018 Tourism companies are currently undergoing rapid changes that affect their business dynamics and have come to shape a new business environment. Consequently, they need to have valuable information to improve service management, make decisions with less risk and develop strategies to obtain advantages over the competition. In this context, all the competitive strategies followed by companies depend closely on information, which thus becomes a vital resource for this industry, although it needs to be integrated to add value to the management of the business. In addition, the very essence of tourism activity characterized by a wide diversity of products and destinations of great complexity, the heterogeneity of tourists and the sophistication of their demands, make information a critical factor for these companies, given that The organization of information sources about a certain product or tourist destination is fundamental to be able to generate demand and ensure tourist satisfaction and loyalty. (De & Mathew, 1999) Despite the fact that Information system and Information technology have been a factor in the development of tourism since its first stages of growth, for a long time the companies in the sector were reluctant to its widespread implementation, considering them an element that could depersonalize the service and the relationships established. Between bidders and tourists receiving it. However, this approach has lost its validity over the years after the massive incorporation of technological innovations into management and some services such as credit cards that helped to improve, to a large extent, the efficiency of the sector. Currently, the management of Information Systems and technologies begin to be perceived as a crucial factor in the strategic formulation of the sector, becoming a fundamental instrument to face the changes that take place in the market. In fact, through the use of these tools, companies in the sector have managed to transform mass tourism towards new conceptions of the most personalized tourist trip. Management Information systems and technologies resources have been facilitating a more efficient use of information flows for some time. In this way, for example, they allow the existing supply to be known at all times on a worldwide scale and that tourists can request information on products, rates, schedules and availability to tourist intermediaries or directly to the providers of the tourist service. . In addition, the bidirectional nature of the information flows generated in commercial transactions leads to the need to use new means of communication to adapt the management processes to the needs of the clients, due to their growing desire to participate actively in the trip planning process. (Middleton & Clarke, 2001). On the one hand, tourism is an essentially international business with a great need for fast, reliable and secure communications that allow the promotion and marketing of products from points of supply far from the points of sale and, on the other hand, the sector of leisure needs to have demonstration and promotion tools based on images and audio-visual media that are increasingly flexible and attractive. All this is marking the most current trends in IT, which are manifested in the priority development of communications and multimedia to meet to a large extent the information needs of the tourism sector (Sheldon, 1997). References:
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by Silvia PerezContent Writer at The Travel Hive Blog and undergraduate Marketing Practice student at the National College of Ireland. ArchivesCategories |