Impact on tourism supply

It becomes evident that tourism suppliers and destination management organization pay attention to online weblogs in order to either exploit their power of e-word of mouth, conduct an easy and free online market research investigating the preferences and profile of tourists, as well as keeping an informal communication with their demand. Many search engines have risen enabling one to identify and locate the existence of weblogs. The most popular one is technorati, which also provides statistics about the online activity of weblogs. The latter is very important as it indicates how popular a weblog is and what its potential influence in search engines can be.

On the other hand, many tourism companies have also taken a pro-active by creating and incorporating weblogs on their websites. For example, Marriott has created its own weblog on its website, while Starwood has created a weblog to communicate with its Preferred Guests and enhance their loyalty through the website thelobby. Company initiated and moderated weblogs can offer the following benefits: solicit and gather feedback from customers, conduct free online market research, become recognized as an expert on a specific topic, communicate and update your customers.

Social – collaborative networking

Website enabling users to create their profile and invite others with similar profile to take part in their online community represent another Web 2.0 technology and model that of social networking. The most popular websites such as myspace and bebo reflect the willingness of Internet users to transform websites as a gathering place of people with similar profiles.

Impact on tourism demand

Social networking websites have a tremendous impact on how tourists nowadays create, organize and consume tourism experiences. Many tourists nowadays are prefer to have the reassurance of other users with similar profile that the trip and itinerary that they have scheduled is the best one, and other tourists want to use the Internet in order to organize a group trip at the same time online with their friends. Such tourists’ demands and preferences have given rise to new e-business models for distributing and producing tourism packages.

Impact on tourism supply

Since sharing travel experiences in a social website can inspire travel, several existing and – or new types of cyber-intermediaries are adopting in their e-business models social networking tools so that their users can collaborate with others and organize simultaneously a trip with their friends. For example, travelpost, realtravel, traveltogether are new types of travel cyber-intermediaries that provides Internet users with the tool to create an online itinerary, share it and e-mail it to friends travelling with them, others can edit it and/or provide feedback, achieve a consensus and finally, enable them make the group booking. Existing cyber-intermediaries, such as Yahoo Trip planner has adopted similar collaborative trip organizing and booking tools, while Sheraton has re-organized and re-designed its website (which is nowadays titled as the Sheraton Belong Neighborhood) whereby Sheraton guests can subscribe to the website, upload their experiences, comments and files, share them with others which in turn can use them for organizing and booking their holiday on the Sheraton property that better matches their profile and experiences they wish to live.

Podcasting and online video

Podcasting refers to the uploading of audio and video files by users on websites. The most popular website for doing sharing such content with others is youtobe.

Impact on tourism demand

Tourism experiences are intangible. One cannot experience, feel and try a travel experience before he/she buys and before he/she travels to a destination. As a result, the purchase risk is high and it is difficult to persuade a user for the qualities of a tourism service. Podcasting helps users take better decisions and experience in some way a travel experience before they decide to buy and consume, as audio and video files of hotels, destinations etc. of other users are considered as more unbiased and not staged experience produced by the supplier that aims to promote its own product as the best one.