How Tourism Communities Can Change Travel Information Quality

Largely ignored by research, online travel communities have already changed the travel behavior of the younger generation. They retrieve and exchange information prior to travelling and share their experiences afterwards. This paper presents some empirical evidence that the quality of the information retrieved justifies their behavior. The evidence is embedded in a larger framework and a set of hypotheses that establish a relationship between the choice of a travel information system and attributes of information quality. The paper argues that relevant attributes of information quality are timeliness, completeness, structure and personalization. Three studies support our proposition that a traditional discussion-based online tourism community provides more timely, more complete and more personalized information than a commercial guidebook. A major deficiency is particularly their lack of structure, but also the other attributes of information quality can be improved by more advanced online tourism communities. A second section thus proposes that a) Wiki communities improve timeliness, completeness and structure of online communities b) personal spaces improve the structure and the personalization of traditional online tourist communities and c) Mobile communities provide higher quality information than traditional online tourist communities

The Market for Online Tourism Communities

Online Communities have been researched for a long time from social, informational as well as economic perspectives. Most approaches up-to-now focussed on the interaction of a number of users with specific communities, are studies about the characteristics of communities in different domains or are general guidelines for the development of these communities. These approaches, however, neglect the aspect that one entire online community is embedded in a landscape of other communities and interrelates with them. In this article we describe this landscape as a market in which a community competes with other communities for online members. We discuss characteristics and forces of this market and present results from a study that monitored 36 online travel communities over a period of several months. Our data indicate that with regards to registered members, there are few very large communities, in contrast to a large number of very small communities. An analysis of the average number of members that are actually online, however, shows that smaller communities (e.g., with a regional scope) are, in principle, able to mobilize a higher degree of their members. We conclude that niche strategies can be successful in this market, and discuss implications for this community landscape

Mediation, expansion and immediacy: how online communities revolutionize information access in the tourism sector

Enabled by Information & Communication Technologies (ICT), online tourism communities are in the process of revolutionizing the way information is shared and distributed in the travel industry. Interpreting online tourism communities as a particular kind of information system, previous research in this area has argued that tourism communities may enhance the quality of information available to tourists, thus improving their subsequent travel experience. Quality was defined in terms of timeliness, completeness, structure and personalization. In this paper, we review this notion of quality and argue that particularly valuable information coming from tourism communities often meets stronger quality characteristics related to information relevance and impact, namely mediation (information helps establish an own, independent perspective on destinations that is not primarily mediated by guide books and travel-related media), expansion (information provided is highly relevant even though it not directly related to the original inquiry to the community) and immediacy (information is not caught in the time-space dilemma of guide books and similarly sedate publications). The three quality characteristics were derived from an empirical investigation of information shared in a wellestablished online tourism community focusing on traveling in Australia. The paper concludes with a discussion of how mobile information systems, such as laptops and personal digital assistants, are changing the way travelers interact with online communities

Smart device interactivity’s impact on value co-creation in the sport industry

Resumen: El propósito de este estudio es investigar el impacto que tienen los dispositivos inteligentes en la interactividad del cliente y la co-creación de productos valiosos en la industria deportiva a través de la implementación del capital social y la eficacia colectiva. Una muestra de 262 estudiantes participaron en este estudio, y un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales (SEM por sus siglas en inglés) fue calculado para medir la relación entre las variables en el modelo conceptual. Los resultados revelaron que la interactividad que consiste de control del usuario, sensibilidad, y sincronización tiene un impacto significativo en el capital social. Además, ambas la interactividad tecnológica y el capital social son asociados positivamente con la eficacia colectiva. Finalmente, la eficacia colectiva tiene una influencia positiva en la co-creación de productos de valiosos, pero el capital social no aparenta afectar directamente la co-creacioón de productos de valor. Basado en estos resultados, este estudio sugiere la necesidad de aprovechar las nuevas plataformas que apoyen la co-creación de productos valiosos con los clientes en un ambiente de mercadeo constantemente cambiante. Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of smart device's interactivity on customer value co-creation in the sports industry through bridging social capital and collective efficacy. A sample of 262 students participated in the study, and a structural equation modeling (SEM) was carried out to measures the relationship between variables in the conceptual model. The results revealed that interactivity consisting of user control, responsiveness, and synchronicity had a significant impact on bridging social capital. In addition, both technological interactivity and bridging social capital were positively associated with collective efficacy. Lastly, collective efficacy had a positive influence on co-creation value, but bridging social capital did not appear to directly affect co-creation value. Based on these results, this study suggests the need to take advantage of new platforms that can build value co-creation with customers in the rapidly changing marketing environment

A Model of ICDT Internet flows on mobile devices for the travel and tourism consumer

Despite the increasing use of mobile devices and their applications in the travel and tourism arena, there is a lack of literature that considers how mobile device tourism applications could be evaluated. Built around a discussion of information attributes (a series of dimensions by which the delivery of information can be assessed) that have been specifically developed for the tourism sector and an examination of the specific characteristics of mobile devices, this theoretical article classifies different online tourism applications that can be accessed by mobile devices according to Angehrn's four virtual spaces (information, communication, distribution, and transaction). This is for the purpose of demonstrating that the majority of applications in the mobile tourism arena eventually fall within the realm of information provision and can thus be assessed according to how they perform in relation to information attributes. A model of ICDT Internet flows on mobile devices for the travel and tourism consumer is presented

Opening new dimensions for e-Tourism

In this paper we describe an e-Tourism environment that takes a community-driven approach to foster a lively society of travelers who exchange travel experiences, recommend tourism destinations or just listen to catch some interesting gossip. Moreover, business transactions such as booking a trip or getting assistance from travel advisors or community members are constituent parts of this environment. All these happen in an integrated, game-like e-Business application where each e-Tourist is impersonated as an avatar. More precisely, we apply 3D Electronic Institutions, a framework developed and employed in the area of multi-agent systems, to the tourism domain. The system interface is realized by means of a 3D game engine that provides sophisticated 3D visualization and enables humans to interact with the environment. We present "itchy feet", a prototype implementing this 3D e-Tourism environment to showcase first visual impressions. This new environment is a perfect research playground for examining heterogeneous societies comprising humans and software agents, and their relationship in e-Tourism. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2006

Incentivizing data quality in blockchain-based systems : the case of the digital cardossier

Inspired by an industry initiative to address the celebrated market for lemons (poor-quality used cars), we investigate how incentives for a permissioned blockchain-based system in the automobile ecosystem can be designed to ensure high-quality data storage and use by different stakeholders. The peer-to-peer distributed ledger platform connects organizations and car owners with disparate interests and hidden intentions. While previous literature has chiefly examined incentives for permissionless platforms, we leverage studies about crowdsensing applications to stimulate research on incentives in permissioned blockchains. This article uses the action design research approach to create an incentive system featuring a rating mechanism influenced by data correction measures. Furthermore, we propose relying on certain institutions capable of assessing data generated within the system. This combined approach of a decentralized data correction and an institutionalized data assessment is distinct from similar incentive systems suggested by literature. By using an agent-based model with strategy evolution, we evaluate the proposed incentive system. Our findings indicate that a rating-based revenue distribution leads to markedly higher data quality in the system. Additionally, the incentive system reveals hidden information of the agents and alleviates agency problems, contributing to an understanding of incentive design in inter-organizational blockchain-based data platforms. Furthermore, we explore incentive design in permissioned blockchains and discuss its latest implications