International travel is only one aspect of tourism.

The main beneficiaries of a DMS are potential travelers, the providers of tourism products and services, national travel agents and outbound travel agents, national tourism institutions, IT providers and investors.

Indeed, human travel in general should become increasingly limited to tourism and pleasure trips.

The systems should facilitate interoperability between local tourism enterprises and foreign brokers and tourism portals, including traditional tour operators, online agencies, Internet travel specific search engines or online intermediaries specialized in tourism niches.

Developing countries' target tourism markets are likely to be organizing their travel arrangements online.

For the last few years, online giant travel agencies such as the top three US online travel agencies (Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity) have ruled the online tourism business.

The distribution of tourism products on the Internet complements traditional distribution channels (travel agents, national tourism offices, tourism producers, call centers, etc.) because a large number of DMOs do not yet have the capacity to develop an effective e tourism website and cannot rely only on uncertain online revenues.

These figures relate only to international travel in most countries the volume of domestic tourism is significantly greater than international arrivals.

Market trends increasingly reveal the growing demand for diversified travel experiences, from seaside resorts (often linked to mass tourism) to cultural discoveries.

ICTs could be used to present dynamically tourism products by travel experience (activities) or preferences (duration of stay, type of accommodation, price).

In the United States, where tourism is mostly domestic and consumers are confident in booking online through national tourism providers, the share of consumers who booked their travel online in 2004 reached 50 per cent, versus 30 per cent in 2000.

While the majority of the sales of tourism products and services still happen off line, travel related Internet usage continues to grow at a rapid rate.

Eco tourism, cultural and natural heritage tourism, health and medical tourism and adventure tourism are some of the tourism niches that are increasingly marketed by destinations and tourism enterprises in developing countries.

At the same time, ICTs reduce operating costs, improve business processes, and provide tourism producers with additional opportunities to present and sell their products, as well as to naturally establish partnerships with carriers, global distribution systems (GDS), tour operators, travel agencies and national tourism offices.

The growing adoption of the Open Travel Alliance (OTA) standard based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) greatly facilitates the exchange of information between tourism enterprises such as airlines, hotels, car rental enterprises and travel integrators such as Cendant, Sabre, Expedia, Orbitz, and SITA.

Travel and tourism constitute a significant industry, which represents 10.7 per cent of the global workforce and provides direct and indirect employment for more than 212 million people worldwide.

It will be an open source portal generator, which will support the travel decision process as well as assist local tourism business processes involving public and private actors.

Business models should provide technological, financial and marketing solutions for the providers and users of the DMS, namely tourism providers (accommodation, transport and leisure companies), travel agents, tour operators, and consumers.

It represents a growing distribution channel, complementary to traditional ones, for consumers, tourism enterprises such as hotels, transport companies, leisure companies and distributors, including travel agencies, tour operators and DMOs.

Tourism is also a major source of employment, supporting 74 million jobs directly according to a World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) estimate, and 215 million (8.1 per cent of the world total) if all the indirect economic effects of the sector are taken into account.

More and more people have the desire and means to travel and the World Tourism Organization is predicting over 1,500 million international arrivals by 2020, more than double the current level.

The information inserted includes name, gender, date of birth, nationality, country of residence and of origin, number and type of the travel document, place and way of entry (air, land or sea), classification of the purpose of the travel (businesses, tourism, etc.), and granted period for stay in Brazil.

Examples include the International Hotel and Restaurant Association, the Pacific Asia Travel Association, the International Federation of Tour Operators, and the Caribbean Alliance for Sustainable Tourism (part of the Caribbean Hotel Association).

Cultural heritage tourism (or just heritage tourism or diaspora tourism) is a branch of tourism oriented towards the cultural heritage of the location where tourism is occurring.

It represents 4,218 billion of GDP (10.4 per cent of the world total), with travel and tourism making a particularly significant contribution to international trade, at over 12 per cent of total exports.

Contributing factors for the successful integration of local tourism enterprises into international tourism markets are adequate e tourism strategies that focus on tourism innovation in terms of tourism products and adoption of e business tools such as destination management systems.

Tourism impacts and opportunities

Tourism and climate change

Tourism and biodiversity conservation

Sustainable consumption and tourism

Despite the bans on travel to Cuba, subscribers to New York Travel Leisure Magazine selected Cuba as the best island in the Caribbean National Geography Traveler Destination Scoreboard reported that, after surveying 200 sustainable tourism experts, historic downtown Havana was chosen among the best 115 places in the world.

Tourism

Tourism

Tourism According to an estimation of the World Tourism Organization, Bosnia and Herzegovina will have the third highest tourism growth rate in the world between 1995 and 2020.

ICT and tourism for development

At its February 2005 meeting, the Interagency Coordination Group on Tourism Statistics considered proposals to update the Tourism Satellite Account Recommended Methodological Framework,2 and the 1993 United Nations World Tourism Organization recommendations on tourism statistics.

While considerable resources are being invested by tourism providers in developed countries to design user friendly DMSs offering various functionalities (e.g. online booking systems and customer relationship management), developing countries have so far mainly developed simple e tourism websites offering information that could satisfy consumer expectations in travel planning but do not offer secure booking or payment facilities.

The Internet gives tourism providers in developing countries an opportunity to access international tourism markets directly and promote a diversified tourism offer based on their cultural and natural resources.

Tourism services

Tourism statistics

The secretariat has contacted the International Federation on Information Technologies, Travel and Tourism (IFITT), the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank IFC, and universities such as those of Trento and Lecce (Italy) for cooperation on the technical side of the initiative.

Part A considers the role of ICTs for tourism development in developing countries and the strategic challenges for local tourism enterprises to successfully participate in international tourism markets.

Promotion of historical and cultural tourism

Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism

Section 13 Transport and Tourism Division