Abstract
In this paper we present the findings of a study that aims at identifying the reasons that let many people still rely on traditional travel agents instead of booking their trips online. The prime motivation for investigating this issue is that it is impossible to have direct experience with the product prior to consumption in the domain of tourism. The Internet provides a powerful environment for the creation of virtual representations of tourism destinations allowing indirect experience that greatly surpasses the possibilities of traditional travel agents. However, the results of the study show that social interaction with travel agents, their expertise and the possibility to save time on search can be of even higher importance. So, we derived the “best of both sides” and suggest the application of an established methodology in the area of multi-agent systems, namely 3D Electronic Institutions, to the tourism domain in order to satisfy the growing demand on human assistance related to online inquiries and to offer customers cutting-edge visualization facilities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Armata, K. (1996). Signs that Sell. Progressive Grosser. Volume 17(21).
Bogdanovych, A., Berger H., Sierra, C. & Simoff, S. (2005). Narrowing the Gap between Humans and Agents in E-Commerce: 3D Electronic Institutions. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Electronic Commerce and Web Technologies, 128–137.
Brown, B. and Chalmers, M. (2003) Tourism and Mobile Technology. in Kuutti, K., Karsten, E.H., Fitzpatrick, G., Dourish, P. and Schmidt, K. eds. Proceedings of ECSCW, Helsinki, Finland, Klewer Academic Press, Dordrecht, pp. 335–355.
Chowdhury, S. (2004). Next Generation Business Handbook. New Strategies from Tomorrow’s Thought Leaders. John Wiley & Sons, 494–495.
Chu, R., (2001) What online Hong Kong travelers look for on airline/ travel websites? International Journal of Hospitality Management 20(1), pp. 95–100.
Daugherty, T., Hairong, L. & Biocca, F. (2005). Experiential E-Commerce: A Summary of Research Investigating the Impact of Virtual Experience on Consumer Learning. Online Consumer Psychology: Understanding and Influencing Consumer Behavior in the Virtual World. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 457–489.
Dittenbach, M., Merkl, D. & Berger, H. (2003). A Natural Language Query Interface for Tourism Information. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information Technologies in Tourism (ENTER’03), 152–162.
Edwards, S. & Harshavardhan, G. (2001). The Novelty of 3D Product Presentations Online. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 2(1).
Esteva, M., de la Cruz, D. & Sierra, C. (2002). ISLANDER: An Electronic Institutions Editor. In Proceedings of the 1st International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent systems (AAMAS’ 02), 1045–1052.
Fesenmaier, D. R., Ricci, F., Schaumlechner, E., Wöber K. & C. Zanella (2003). DIETORECS: Travel Advisory for Multiple Decision Styles. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Information Technologies in Tourism (ENTER’03), 232–241.
Früh, C, Jain, S. & Zakhor, A. (2005). Data Processing Algorithms for Generating Textured 3D Building Facade Meshes from Laser Scans and Camera Images. International Journal of Computer Vision, 61(2), 159–184.
Hurst, M (2000). Why 3D shopping makes no sense-measuring the online customer experience. [online] cited at http://www.goodexperience.com.
Klein, S. & Loebbecke, C (1999). Signaling and Segmentation on Electronic Markets: Innovative Pricing Strategies for Improved Resource Allocation. In Proceedings of the 6th Research Symposium on Emerging Electronic Markets, 127–142.
Koppius, O., Speelman, W., Stulp, O., Verhoef, B., van Heck, E. (2005) Why are customers coming back to buy their airline tickets online? Theoretical explanations and empirical evidence. Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Electronic commerce, Xi’an, China. Pages: 319–326
Prasarnphanich, P. and Gillenson, M. L., (2003) The Hybrid Clicks and Bricks Business Model, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 46, No. 12, Dec. 2003, pp. 178–185.
Stewart, J. (2005). Travel Agencies Say they are a Better Choice than Internet, The Frederick News-Post, Frederick, Md. Aug. 22, http://www.fredericknewspost.com/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Wien
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bogdanovych, A., Berger, H., Simoff, S., Sierra, C. (2006). Travel Agents vs. Online Booking: Tackling the Shortcomings of Nowadays Online Tourism Portals. In: Hitz, M., Sigala, M., Murphy, J. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2006. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-32710-X_55
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-211-32710-X_55
Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna
Print ISBN: 978-3-211-30987-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-211-32710-4