Tourism and information technologies: Mapping the sources of innovation

There have been increasing concerns about the ability of emerging communication and information technologies (CIT) to radically change the nature of the tourism industrial sector. Well documented concerns by tourism operators and analysts range from understanding the ability of CITs to affect competitive advantage in tourism, as well as comprehending the more profound transformations in the technological and human resources requirements at the individual business level. The link between CITs and broader tourism system considerations such as the ability of destinations and nations to dominate the tourism trade in the longer term are often noted but rarely comprehensively examined due to the complexity of the questions raised and the lack of analytical tools. Little is known about the ability of CITs to transform the tourism consumption technology (the way motivations, recreation needs, cultural influences transform into a need or compulsion to travel) or the tourism production landscape (the set of technologies called upon to produce a tourism commodity). Possible impacts of CITs extend to the nature of economic coordination (for instance the extent of competition, the size of firms and linkages between them), the changing relevance or even existence of present functional units in tourism production (for instance fears of disappearance of travel agents, tour operators or other intermediaries sometimes referred to as "disintermediation") and the boundaries of the tourism industrial sector. The latter concerns include both private and public sector organizational transformations and constitute critical questions for tourism as they involve multiple causes and many interacting consequences that few dare deliberately investigate.