RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

RSS feeds allow people to subscribe to online distributions of news, blogs, podcasts, or other information. By doing so, one does not have to visit each inpidual website that he/she is interesting to read any new information, but rather the RSS feeds all new updated information to the users’ RSS reader. RSS readers enable Internet users to consolidate and read all new information that is customized to the profile within one consolidated message. Many free RSS exist on the Internet, e.g. FeedDemon, NewsGator, Rojo, software on the website of Google, My Yahoo etc.

Impact on tourism demand

RSS feeders saves information search time for Internet users as well as have a major impact on the information is nowadays being distributed on the Internet.

Impact on tourism supply

Many tourism enterprises and suppliers have adopted and incorporated RSS feeds in their websites in order to benefit from the following issues:

• Keep a communication with their customers such as sending them

Newsletters. However, RSS is an information distribution technology that is characterized as a demand pull rather than a supply push model.

• RSS helps companies enhance their Search engines Optimization. This is because RSS helps in creating inbound links to a company’s website as well as

RSS can also be used for informing search engines whenever new content is uploaded on a website so that they can index it.

Blogs (or Weblogs)

Blogs are a form of an online journal (newspaper or personal diary) that is published on a website and are usually distributed through RSS and/or trackback technologies (these inform the creator of a comment that someone has “replied” and/or linked to his/her contribution). Blogs are a type of a newspaper as information published on them is presented chronological and it can be related to either a very general topic (travel in general) or a very specific topic (cycling tourism in Germany). Numerous examples of general and-or specific blogs exist in the tourism industry, such as

tripadvisor, hotelchatter, igougo, gazetters (a B2B weblog for travel agents). Anyone can create a weblog by using a free software offered for free at several websites nowadays (e.g. Google) and he/she can use it for publishing text, images, links to other blogs, Webpages, audio and video files. Weblogs are becoming very important tools affecting information search since their links, content and popularity can dictate the position of a company on a search engine search. Many travelers – tourists are using weblogs as fun and-or as a way of self-expression.

Impact on tourism demand

Weblogs are becoming a very important information source for international travelers for getting travel advice and suggestions of tourism suppliers. Weblogs have the power of the impartial information and the e-word-of-mouth that is diffusing online like a virus. Moreover, it is very likely that when reading and sharing one’s travel experience through weblogs, this also creates the willingness to travel and visit the same destination or suppliers to other as well. Indeed, when reading users’ responses to travel weblogs it is very evident to see that user generated content has a similar AIDA effect to other users as paid advertisements aim to do. Specifically, weblog’s content can: 1) Attract the attention, eyeballs of other Internet users and increase traffic on a website, 2) create Interest to users who can now seek more and additional information, 3) develop someone’s desire to also visit a destination and/or buy the product and 4) foster an Action (e.g. book a hotel or organize a trip to a destination). Of course, it should be noted that the power of Weblogs can also be negative, i.e. spread a bad experience of a tourist to millions of online Internet users. Therefore, it is very important that tourism companies establish a corporate policy regarding by whom and how both negative as well as positive users’ comments on weblogs are responded.