Tourism technology

Tourism technology

Tourism Technology is a term coined by the Korea Tourism Organization, which refers to the recent trend of incorporating technology with the tourism industry.

Definition of Tourism Technology

The convergence of industries has forced people to create terminology such as information technology, biotechnology, ubiquitous technology and even cultural technology to explain frequently talked about topics. Tourism Technology is a term that encompasses all social, cultural, managerial, and value-adding activities of the tourism industry. Tourism Technology also incorporates and encourages technological advancements and economic development in the tourism industry.

The Origin of Tourism Technology

"Tourism Technology", initially based on the concept of cultural technology, is a more comprehensive term covering knowledge used to add to the value of tourism products on a micro level and the management of the travel and tourism industry on a macro level. New tourism products are also the end result of tourism technology combining with other industries. These include medical tourism, educational tourism, agricultural tourism, marine tourism, and the application of information technology to the travel and tourism industry.

Application of Tourism Technology

The term "technology" can easily call to mind scientific achievements, computer graphic skills, special effects and other engineering-related images. However, "Tourism Technology" encompasses the integrated fields mentioned in the previous paragraph, statistics, managerial and socio-cultural know-how, and skills that the tourism industry can adopt to design, produce, and market various tourism products. In addition to coordinating various aspects of human resources in the travel and tourism industry, “Tourism Technology” describes a comprehensive field containing but not limited to such widely referred to subjects as entertainment technology, contents technology and creative technology. Examples of how tourism technology can be applied are as follows.

*Development of tourism products that tell a story

*Convergence with other industries such as medical and film industries

*Application of advanced information technology to provide tourist information via navigation systems or PDAs.

Software for Tourists

One of the latest applications is software that permits tourists to customize their visits according to their preferences. Luis Castillo Vidal, computer engineer of the University of Granada and one of the authors of the study, points out that, in order to design the customized visit plans, they have used Artificial Intelligence techniques, “a science that provides computers with abilities to solve problems which, in principle, can only be solved by humans”.

Users must have access to the internet, either through a computer, a mobile phone or a PDA, in order to be able to access a web where they can define their preferences and needs, such as their artistic, cultural and gastronomic preferences, their lifestyle and favourite hours, whether they are disabled or not and the spending capacity.

The new “adaptive user-focused system to plan tourist visits”, as their authors describe it, means “step forward” in the current trend of tourist activities automation, such as the online payment of transport tickets and accommodation, or the use of audio-guides in the monuments tours .

Artificial Intelligence, says Castillo, can play an important role in future, as it combines computer’s capacities of memory and fast execution with faculties as human as common sense, intuition and imagination.

Popular software applications for tourists can be grouped in the following categories:
* Translation software
* Navigation software
* Weather software
* Size and measure conversion software
* Currency rates and stock exchange rates sofware
* Transport information software (i.e. flight status, delays e.t.c.)
* Tour guides software

External links

* [http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/FU/FU_EN_15.jsp?cid=289722 KTO's Tourism Technology Strategy]
* [http://prensa.ugr.es/prensa/research/verNota/prensa.php?nota=530 Software that permits tourists to customize their visits according to their preferences]


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