Icts in the Tourism Industry and Its Influences on the Tourist Consumer Behaviour

The tourism industry often needs a various range of information to satisfy and attracts its consumers and most of this information is delivered promptly to the customers with the help of the information and communication technologies (Poon, 1993). And as result, the global tourism industry is rapidly changing and the information and communication technologies ( ICTs) such as the internet is altering the structure of tourism industry and how it market his products and conducts its promotion. In order to understand the role and impacts that ICTs has in the wider tourism industry and to find its influences on the tourist consumer behaviour, it is advised to first know what ICTs are and to comprehend the study on consumer behaviour based on the tourism industry.
Information and communication technologies are defined as the collective term given to the most recent development in the mode (electronic) and the mechanisms (computers and communications technologies) used for the acquisitions, processing analysis, storage, retrieval, dissemination, and application of information (Poon 1993 cited in Buhalis 2003, p 7). It can also be defined as “the use of digital tools for business functions and processes” (Cooper et al 2005, p.704). When tailing about ICTs, it consist of hardware (self service terminals), software (front office applications), and telecommunications (broadcast of images, teleconferencing ...), and the groupware (tools for group communications such as email). The last one is the humanware which consist of skilled people responsible for the maintenance and programming. Any of these are used in the tourism industry for a better management of operation and communication between stakeholders.
The Tourism industry had really gained from the evolution of information technology with the emergence of computerised networks that change the whole stage of the distribution and marketing of tourism products. The most popular and successful applications of ICT used in

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