The Open Tourism Consortium:: Laying The Foundations for the Future of Tourism

Abstract

The current highly fragmented multitude of information systems supporting tourism greatly increases the tourist's search costs, and while touring there is almost no information systems support. A more cohesive and integrated approach should enhance the tourist's experience in the three phases of tourism: planning, touring, and reminiscing. The emergence of u-commerce, the ultimate form of commerce, is the backdrop to identifying a series of information products that will improve the searching, management, delivery, and sharing of tourism data. It is proposed that the six products identified (TourDM, TourML, TourStyle, TourCMS, TourImplement, and TourCommunity) be developed using the open source model and the cooperative efforts of a large number of geographically dispersed students. The Open Tourism Consortium has been created to support this collaborative endeavor.Open tourism consortium Tourism Tourist information systems Tourism data