Internet often a land of missed opportunity for tourism bureaus

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Tourism is the largest industry in the world, and the largest seller of products and services through the Internet, says Daniel Fesenmaier, director of the National Laboratory for Tourism and eCommerce at the University of Illinois.

Yet crucial parts of the industry have barely realized the technology’s potential, he said. Through a survey of 250 convention and visitors bureaus in the United States, Fesenmaier and doctoral students Yu-Lan Yuan and Ulrike Gretzel found that 95 percent had a presence on the Internet. More than half, however, limited their effort to basic Web sites, with little more than brochure information and an e-mail address.

Only about 5 to 7 percent were "really using the technology to do some things effectively," Fesenmaier said. "There are very few that spend more than 10 percent of their marketing funds on technology-related efforts," he said.

Fesenmaier thinks convention and visitors bureaus and other "destination marketing organizations" (DMOs) need to focus more attention on computer and Internet technologies because they fit so well with the needs of an information-intensive, highly fragmented industry.

Many tourism-related enterprises are small operations of limited means tied to specific geographic locations, he noted. The Internet offers the opportunity to establish Web-based, consumer-oriented portals into those locations – allowing potential tourists to sample local sites and products, explore local history, register for rooms or unique experiences, and read accounts by previous visitors. The Internet has additional benefits for tourism, Fesenmaier noted, because the industry is almost entirely about selling experiences, rather than goods. "The experience that they have is the value added, it’s not the place itself," he said. The Internet offers a means for places – even places not well-known – to package and market their potential for certain kinds of experience.

But to make it happen requires a different focus on the part of DMOs, Fesenmaier noted. "Their primary role isn’t marketing anymore – it’s training, it’s facilitating the connection of businesses, it’s providing vision in some way considered cohesive from a consumer point of view."

### According to Fesenmaier, the UI-based lab is the largest research facility, at least in the United States, that focuses on the connection between tourism and technology. The lab works on contract with the Illinois Bureau of Tourism and is working with communities in Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas, among other states. The lab is working on projects in Australia, Austria, Canada and Italy. In fact, the recent U.S. study of convention and visitors bureaus actually is a warm-up for a more extensive study for the Canadian Tourism Commission.

The lab can be found on the Web at http://www.tourism.uiuc.edu/.

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