‘e-tourism’ is the answer:

With more links and no leaks

Lionel Wijesiri

Sri Lanka’s tourist earnings last year has topped US $ 325 million and, given the prevailing upward trend, it will most likely reach US $ 700 million this year. The earnings began to rise steeply from the second half of the last year. From January to July this year 342,000 tourists arrived in the country and when compared with same period of the last year, it is nearly a 49% increase. Tourism, once again, is becoming one of the country’s leading economic sectors and we can now look forward to better foreign exchange earnings in the coming years.

Yet, it is easily said than done. As a modality of international commerce, tourism involves not only inflows of foreign financial resources but also outflows, referred to as “leaks”. When they exceed specific levels, these outflows can significantly neutralize the positive financial effect of a country’s earnings from tourism.

Leakage is the process whereby part of the foreign exchange earnings generated by tourism, rather than being retained by tourist-receiving country, is either retained by tourist-generating countries or repatriated to them in the form of profits, income and royalty remittances and promotional expenditures. The average leakage for most developing countries today is between 40 and 50 percent of gross tourism earnings for small economies and between 10 and 20 percent for most advanced and diversified developing countries.

Unfortunately, world tourism today is mostly concentrated in a handful of Multi National Enterprises in developed countries, which both run the business and reap the benefits. Most inward and outward global tours are planned, booked and financed through them. With their obvious technological advantage, these providers carry out most of the sales transactions and absorb a large share of the profits.

ICT Package

The e-tourism concept offers a chance to change that pattern. This is a novel type of tourism which has emerged with the advent of new forms of ICT that is radically transforming the international tourism industry.

Many potential travellers are now shopping for their vacations online, and we have the chance to court these customers directly, offering domestic flavour, unique experiences and local knowledge that can trump overseas competition. However, the challenge is to reorganize tourism services and set up well-linked websites that allow domestically owned hotels, banks and travel firms to provide the entire package of services necessary for tourists to arrange their trips - reservations, plane flights, currency exchange and payments. That way the profits can stay at home and contribute to job growth and economic development It is not an easy task and needs heavy amount of investment.

Here, the Government needs to play a central role by providing the investment in technical infrastructure and guidance. The stiff investments necessary may be worth the cost: effective tourism marketing through the Internet can help us to build our own brand images, develop new products, promote our tourism resources, expand our customer bases, and keep a much higher share of tourism profits.

Policy

But what can the Government do to support the adoption of e-tourism by the business sector, and particularly SMEs? How much should be left to the business sector itself and where should the government intervention necessary? These are difficult problems to be tackled by the Government.

In order to answer these questions, first of all , the Government must formulate and implement an effective e-tourism policy. This requires the involvement of all stakeholders, including the public sector, the business community and NGOs. National e-tourism policy and strategies should include measures to improve human skills and the capacity to apply ICTs, develop and improve infrastructure; build a legal and regulatory framework that can create trust and confidence and support the growth of e-tourism; provide incentives and support for the adoption of e-tourism, especially among SMEs; and establish mechanisms to monitor and measure e-tourism access and usage and to facilitate planning and benchmarking of progress.

CRM Solutions

E-tourism is more than just flashy websites; it allows local suppliers and service providers in the tourism sector to structure their products in such a way as to make them visible, accessible and competitive in the global marketplace. E-tourism makes it possible for niche products to reach niche markets. The potential and benefit - for both backward and forward linkages is therefore enormous.

Customer relationship management (CRM) based system enables tourist service provider to offer knowledge, value and efficient service to its overseas clients. CRM enables service the local organisation to build up a life time relationship by providing on time solutions. Tourism industry needs excellent CRM solutions to assist visitors or clients before flying on tour, during tour and always after tour services. CRM solutions can be provided to a visitor through web, email, communication centres, kiosks and travelling information offices anytime & anywhere.

Just imagine how beneficial is it for a tourist to know status of his reservation by dialling just a designated telephone number. Or maybe, he is standing at “Sigiriya” and is able to read history details with all graphics and animated roles on his laptop or multimedia com-centre. Even he can check his further travel registration request process through any laptop.

Interactive Digital Television (IDTV), Mobile technologies and Internet are carving new faces in customer services for tourism industry. Using GPRS and GIS, KM and BI can be easily integrated on maps. It is in process. That’s great for adventure tourist. Where am I? You are in dangerous forest. Beware!!

Through a mobile, tourist can be guided through cultural heritage through multi – language voice, text or images. Even it is possible for a tourist to find details on fees, opening days and timings for nearby places. Find bookshop, cafe, restaurant or ATM from where ever he is.

These are examples of what are available in advanced countries. In those countries, e – tourism concept was applied and put in practice in full form. However e – tourism is still in growing phase with advance technology’s application. But for a developing country like Sri Lanka, it is under utilization phase. Our e-tourism policy should plan to reach this advanced stage within the next 5 years.

Success Stories

There are many success stories of the countries who adapted e-tourism. Malaysia is one. The Malaysian government’s tourism website was described as a model of e-tourism by the Secretary of UNCTAD.

He said in many ways the website was a model with superb display of marketing information, graphics and designs directing visitors immediately to separate portals for consumers and business travels. “Relevant information is available at one’s fingertips. This is the marvel of e-tourism, a dramatic demonstration of burgeoning partnership between technology and the travel industry,” he said when opening UNCTAD Conference on “Asia-Pacific; E-tourism for Growth. Today, the portal has more than 500 industry partners and receives more than 30 million hits a month. There are many more success stories.

The initiatives to promote and develop e-tourism in Thailand reported 150,000 hits on its booking websites with over 1,000 confirmed bookings monthly when they started few years ago. Similarly Cambodia’s website saw 230,000 visits and one of its hotels reported that 70% of its revenue came from online bookings since they begun online bookings about three years ago. Vietnam’s website attracted 7.5mil users.

The adoption of e-tourism concept has become one of the choices that seem unavoidable because they bear so directly on the prospects for competing and even surviving in the highly competitive global tourism economy.

With small tourism enterprises representing numerically the dominant form of tourism operators, tourism playing a major economic role and contributing to poverty alleviation focusing on e-tourism should be an essential piece of tourism development.