Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 1997: Proceedings of the International Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1997 (Few Body Systems)

For the fourth time now, experts in tourism from various countries come to attend the ENTER conference in order to inform themselves and others about the current devel­ opments in the usage of information and communication technologies. The ENTER conference is thought as a platform for the exchange of ideas, experi­ ences, opinions, and visions among scientists and practitioners. The visions presented at the last three ENTER conferences have triggered many requirements of important on-going and planned projects in the application of communication and information technologies in tourism. The scope of the papers of this proceedings covers the most recent and relevant to­ pics in our area of interest. The sessions are primarily devoted to intelligent agents and systems, the future role of global (reservation) systems, the new. chances of data­ base applications due to the most recent technological developments. and above all the role of the Internet (and Intranet). I would like to express my cordial thanks to all institutions actively supporting this event, namely: • The Edinburgh & Lothian Tourist Board • The International Federation of Information Technology in Tourism (IFITT) Several people spent numerous hours organizing the scientific programme of EN­ TER. The names of most of them will appear in the following pages. Front Matter....Pages I-XII A Meta-Data Driven Tourism Information System Prototype....Pages 1-9 Geographical Information System Based Decision Support System for Tourism Planning and Development....Pages 10-19 The Relevance of Meta Modeling and Data Warehouses for Executive Information Systems....Pages 20-28 SnowNet: An Agent-Based Internet Tourist Information Service....Pages 29-38 Expert systems as an important competitive advantage in tourism....Pages 39-46 Distributed software Agents for WWW-based Tourism Information Systems (DATIS)....Pages 47-56 Realizing Travel Malls: A Logic Programming Based Approach....Pages 57-66 Electronic Marketcoordination in the Travel Industry: The Role of Global Computer Reservation Systems....Pages 67-74 Informed Decision Making in Tourism Management Closing the Information Circuit....Pages 75-84 The value of information technology: A case study and a framework....Pages 85-99 National Co-operation and Strategic Alliances....Pages 100-109 The New Network in the Norwegian Tourism Industry....Pages 110-118 The Future for Direct Retailing of Travel and Tourism Products: The Influence of Information Technology....Pages 119-128 The Promise of Information Technology in the Travel Industry....Pages 129-139 Federating Databases and Files: An Approach to a Uniform and Comfortable Interface to Heterogeneous Tourist Information Systems....Pages 140-149 Clustering Distributed Complex Objects - Management and Performance....Pages 150-159 Mugla Tourism Information System....Pages 160-168 An Intelligent System for Tourism Information....Pages 169-179 TIS@WEB - Database Supported Tourist Information on the Web....Pages 180-189 Electronic distribution of holiday and business hotels....Pages 190-198 Marketing information and decision support on the Internet — New opportunities for national, regional and city tourist offices....Pages 199-207 How to assess WWW-applications for tourism information systems from the end-user perspective. Methodical design and empirical evidence....Pages 208-220 A Qualitative Analysis of Hotel List Providers on the World Wide Web....Pages 221-230 Developing Tourism in the Lunigiana....Pages 231-240 Dynamic Web Links for Tourism Information Services....Pages 241-245 The Role of Intranet in the Tourism Domain....Pages 246-248 Electronic marketing and business reengineering -with examples from the tourism domain....Pages 249-264 Information Technologies in Hospitality Businesses: The case study of La Plagne, France....Pages 265-274 Catalysts in introducing information technology in small and medium sized hospitality organisations....Pages 275-285 The attitude of small and medium-sized tourist enterprises towards Information and Telecommunication Technologies. The case of Italy....Pages 286-294 MINOTAURUS: A Distributed Multimedia Tourism Information System....Pages 295-306 Workflow Technology: An Application for Tourism Management....Pages 307-316 Edite - A Natural Language Interface to Databases A new dimension for an old approach....Pages 317-326 Some Applications of the Multimedia Geographical Information Systems in Tourism....Pages 327-335 Information Age and Tourism....Pages 336-341 Back Matter....Pages 342-344 The proceedings of the conference ENTER - International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism - provide an international forum for the discussion of the role of telecommunication and information systems in tourism, inform potential users and people concerned with the importance of such technologies and explain their functioning. The papers in this volume are primarily devoted to intelligent agents and systems, the future role of global (reservation) systems, the new chances of database applications due to the most recent technological developments, and above all the role of the Internet (and Intranet). This volume presents the proceedings of the 1998 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, which sought to provide a forum for discussing the role of telecommunication and information systems in tourism