Developing Countries Keep Tourism Profits at home by Helping from ''E-Tourism''

UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)’s Information Economy Report 2005 (1) (IER), notes that a major source of income in developing countries are finding tourism. It can be greatly enhanced by setting up domestically run websites that enable potential customers to research, reserve, and pay for trips and hotel stays electronically. Tourism’s profits often drain out the world’s poorer nations and back to the large travel firms, hotel chains, and booking and transportation providers based in the United States and Europe that are responsible for arranging most foreign vacations.

Recent studies from Increasing of Tourists’ Internet Shopping which released in US report that 56% of Internet users are planning their vacations online, including making hotel and airline reservations. Because the internet offers a chance to change for online shopping and countries in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia have the that chance to court these customers directly by offering domestic flavor, unique experiences and local knowledge that can trump overseas competition. The report notes, 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 such as reservations, plane flights, currency exchange and payments.

However, developing regions that have low levels of Internet access and use can find that setting up such networks is difficult, the report points out, but the Caribbean Tourism Organization has demonstrated the payoffs for succeeding. http://www.doitcaribbean.com/ was established in late 2000 by focusing on vacations flavored with local culture and heritage, and helps Caribbean countries, especially smaller ones, compete for tourism profits in a region where tourism accounts for 25% of GDO and generated US$21 billion in revenues in 2004.

Therefore, by the increasing number of this revenue, Governments and National and Regional tourism organizations in poorer countries need to focus on spreading Internet access and on setting up linked websites that can cover the entire “value chain” behind international travel. A particularly daunting task will be overcoming domestic bottlenecks in technology, payments, telecommunications, and computer adoption and use.

The effectiveness of e-tourism marketing can help developing countries to build their own brand images, develop new products, promote their tourism resources, expand their customer bases, and keep a much higher share of tourism profits.


References:

Informations Econony Report 2005, Developing Countries Keep Tourism Profits at home by Helping from E-Tourism, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 15 Nov 2009,
http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/sdteedc20051_en.pdf