Progress in Tourism Management Reviews

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH 
The technological revolution experienced through the development of the Internet has 
changed dramatically the market conditions for tourism organisations. ICTs evolve rapidly 
providing new tools for tourism marketing and management. They support the interactivity 
between tourism enterprises and consumers and as a result they reengineer the entire 
process of developing, managing and marketing tourism products and destinations. 
Increasingly the impacts of ICTs are becoming clearer, as networking, dynamic interfaces 
with consumers and partners and the ability to redevelop the tourism product proactively and 
reactively are critical for the competitiveness of tourism organisations. The literature review 
undertaken demonstrates that eTourism research is in its infancy and that a number of issues 
are only now start being addressed in the literature.
Increasingly ICTs will provide the “info-structure” for the entire industry and will overtake all 
mechanistic aspects of tourism transactions. It is evident, however, that the future of 
eTourism will be focused on Consumer Centric technologies that will support organisations to 
interact with their customers dynamically. Consumers are becoming incredibly powerful and 
are increasingly able to determine elements of their tourism products. They are also much 
more sophisticated and experienced and therefore are much more difficult to please. 
Innovative tourism enterprises will have the ability to divert resources and expertise to 
servicing consumers and provide a higher value added transactions. The development of new 
and more powerful ICT applications empowers both suppliers and destinations to enhance 

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their efficiency and re-engineer their communication strategies. Innovative technologies will 
support interoperability, personalisation and constant networking. Agile strategies are 
therefore required at both strategic and tactical management levels to ensure that the ICT 
driven opportunities and challenges are turned to the advantage of tourism organisations 
towards enhancing their innovation and competitiveness.