12,569 research outputs found

    Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

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    This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing

    Agent fabrication and its implementation for agent-based electronic commerce

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    In the last decade, agent-based e-commerce has emerged as a potential role for the next generation of e-commerce. How to create agents for e-commerce applications has become a serious consideration in this field. This paper proposes a new scheme named agent fabrication and elaborates its implementation in multi-agent systems based on the SAFER (Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution & Roaming) architecture. First, a conceptual structure is proposed for software agents carrying out e-commerce activities. Furthermore, agent module suitcase is defined to facilitate agent fabrication. With these definitions and facilities in the SAFER architecture, the formalities of agent fabrication are elaborated. In order to enhance the security of agent-based e-commerce, an infrastructure of agent authorization and authentication is integrated in agent fabrication. Our implementation and prototype applications show that the proposed agent fabrication scheme brings forth a potential solution for creating agents in agent-based e-commerce applications

    Trade and Competition in the Transatlantic Area

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    This Essay looks at the interplay of market opening, competition, and regulation in the air transport, telecom, and financial services areas, which are particularly relevant to the transatlantic relationship between the U.S. and Europe

    A Factory-based Approach to Support E-commerce Agent Fabrication

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    With the development of Internet computing and software agent technologies, agent-based e-commerce is emerging. How to create agents for e-commerce applications has become an important issue along the way to success. We propose a factory-based approach to support agent fabrication in e-commerce and elaborate a design based on the SAFER (Secure Agent Fabrication, Evolution & Roaming) framework. The details of agent fabrication, modular agent structure, agent life cycle, as well as advantages of agent fabrication are presented. Product-brokering agent is employed as a practical agent type to demonstrate our design and Java-based implementation

    XSRL: An XML web-services request language

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    One of the most serious challenges that web-service enabled e-marketplaces face is the lack of formal support for expressing service requests against UDDI-resident web-services in order to solve a complex business problem. In this paper we present a web-service request language (XSRL) developed on the basis of AI planning and the XML database query language XQuery. This framework is designed to handle and execute XSRL requests and is capable of performing planning actions under uncertainty on the basis of refinement and revision as new service-related information is accumulated (via interaction with the user or UDDI) and as execution circumstances necessitate change

    Low cost air travel : social inclusion or social exclusion?

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    The low-cost revolution that has impacted upon North America, Western Europe, and, increasingly, other parts of the world, is, on initial examination, a development that has created opportunity for wider travel for all sectors of the community. This is certainly true in terms of price in that the impact of the emergence of low-cost carriers on major, generally short-haul, air routes has been to reduce headline prices significantly across all service providers. However, there are operating features within low-cost air travel which, notwithstanding price, may create barriers to access for some sections of the community. This article looks at the operating features of low-cost airlines and evaluates these in terms of social exclusion criteria. Based on an exploratory study of consumers in Glasgow, Scotland, the article concludes that access to low-cost airlines is considerably easier in both practical and perceptual terms for consumers with a flexible relationship to working and leisure time, and also access to the technology and financial systems required to avail of the best travel opportunities

    B2B e-marketplaces in the airline industry:process drivers and performance indicators

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    Competitive pressures are increasing within and between different strategically oriented groups of airlines. This paper focuses on the level of efficiency improvements gained by using e-Marketplaces in the procurement process. Findings from a survey among 88 international airlines reveal that the use of Business-to-Business (B2B) e-Marketplaces does play different roles across the various airline groupings. Airlines that are involved in strategic alliances show higher joint procurement activities than airlines that are not involved in strategic alliances. However, alliances are probably viewed as loose arrangements and thus airlines may be reluctant to share information on procurement prices and processes with another airline that could also be acting as a competitor. The financial involvement in or initiation of e-Marketplaces by airlines is very low. Low cost airlines show high use of e-Marketplaces, but demonstrate little financial involvement in contrast. Overall, the categories of spares and repairs, office supplies, tools and ground support equipment (GSE) show the greatest potential for reducing costs and increasing procurement process efficiencies. The intense competitive pressures facing carriers will make their search for tools to realise even incremental savings and efficiency gains ever more urgent. There is evidence that e-Marketplaces are one tool to improve such performance indicators

    Travel Agencies: From online channel conflict to multi-channel harmony

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    The adoption of Internet as a distribution channel and a privileged e-commerce tool has pressed Travel Agencies (TAs) to a latent channel conflict. Our main interest is to understand how the traditional independent travel agencies in Portugal deal with the online channel. We suggest that TAs have to develop an innovative business model based on the online and offline complementary channels, in order to achieve a multi-channel harmony
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