Travel planning services integrated in eTourism web portals comprise user-friendly functionalities that support users in composing their personal itineraries. Travel plans provide an invaluable source of high-quality information about: how website users compose their personalized travel package, how the travel planning process takes place, how the social and travel context influence users’ travel needs and preferences. This opens up new opportunities for automatically analysing the user interactions with e-tourism web portals to derive prospected consumer behaviour and market trends, that go beyond the results provided by traditional web site analysis tools, and that are typically available to tourism organizations only through long-term, expensive surveys. A case study of this approach of qualitative market analysis is presented to exemplify the concrete potential provided by travelling planning functionalities as tools to support tourism managers in strategies formulation.
The Unexploited Benefits of Travel Planning Functionalities: a Case Study of Automatic Qualitative Market Analysis
Not, Elena;Venturini, Adriano
2011-01-01
Abstract
Travel planning services integrated in eTourism web portals comprise user-friendly functionalities that support users in composing their personal itineraries. Travel plans provide an invaluable source of high-quality information about: how website users compose their personalized travel package, how the travel planning process takes place, how the social and travel context influence users’ travel needs and preferences. This opens up new opportunities for automatically analysing the user interactions with e-tourism web portals to derive prospected consumer behaviour and market trends, that go beyond the results provided by traditional web site analysis tools, and that are typically available to tourism organizations only through long-term, expensive surveys. A case study of this approach of qualitative market analysis is presented to exemplify the concrete potential provided by travelling planning functionalities as tools to support tourism managers in strategies formulation.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
