Chapter Fifteen

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Chapter Fifteen
Community Tourism and E-Commerce
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Agenda

• Benefits of e-commerce for community-controlled
  tourism
• A general methodology for development of a
  community-based website
• Implementation of the methodology
• General Issues
• Is ANY community a community in this sense?

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Why Tourism?

• Important contribution to the economy
• Provides jobs to the locals
• Good example of E-commerce impacts
• Much of the product is intellectual
• Product selection process is highly segregated
  from product realization process
• Can use benefits of IT (low transaction and
  coordination costs, for example)

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E-Commerce Benefits to Tourism

• Knowledge management and marketing
• Changing consumer behavior through IT
• New product development
• Disintermediation
• Labor market impacts
• Empowerment of small and medium enterprises
  through IT
• Low entrance and exit costs

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Porters 5 Competitive Forces
New Entrants
Lock out via barriers to entry
Lock in via switching costs
Traditional Rivalry Among Firms
Lock in via switching costs
Suppliers
Buyers
Where does IT contribute? Do things work
differently internationally? Whats going on?
Lock out via barriers to entry
Substitutes
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Porter Revisited, Upgraded
Its cheap to get into E-Commerce. Whats
expensive is getting out loss of prestige, face,
actual money for contracts, loss of customers
confidence, etc.
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Community Tourism Goals

• Provide an experience that
• Respects traditional values
• Generates economic benefits for the host
  population
• Is authentic
• Is ecologically sound
• Is politically viable

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Website Benefits for Community Tourism

• Websites are flexible, they can be easily updated
• Internet sites provide an international presence.
• Individualized customer relations
• Websites have potential to reflect community
• Nurture partnerships among agencies
• Customer can make better decisions
• Cost savings in distribution, service, marketing
  and promotion
• Demographic profile of users
• Internet is at low cost and many people are using
  it now

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North Hokianga

• Geography
• Communities sit on Northern shore of Hokianga
  harbor
• Forest, sun dunes and beaches (tourist
  attraction)
• Population density is very low
• Inhabitants are Maori descent, indigenous people
  of NZ
• Education
• Poor Education levels
• Little technological knowledge

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North Hokianga Contd.

• Strong community region
• No manufacturing
• Logging industry only
• Mostly small subsistence farms (made up of cows,
  chickens and horses)
• A growing reliance on the sale of cultivated
  marijuana
• Low income levels
• Welfare grants
• Strong cultural heritage

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Web Site Plan
Picture Gallery
Sales bookings
Welcome
Business register
Things to do
Travel documents
Information download
Culture/place
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Click here to visit New Zealand
Looks nice, eh? Wanna visit?
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Problems, Barriers

• Phased approach ignored realities
• Community really didnt respond, wasnt really
  ready
• Needed web raising
• Didnt recognize dual interests
• Didnt recognize role of agents

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Issues for Community Website Development
Content Source Developers or Community?Acceptab
ilityRisk Is community ready to accept risk of
change?Commitments Does the community have the
time to commit?Cultural Values Clash between
open information and closed societal values wrt.
InformationRewarding Efforts Unequal costs and
rewards create problemsMeasurement What are the
effects? Is the website successful? How do we
know?
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Dual Interest Web Methodology
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Technology Helps

• But communication and attitude change are the
  keys to changing consumer behavior

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4-Stage Attitude Change Model
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Attitude, Behavior Change and E-Commerce

• Attitude Change Model
• Attention
• Comprehension
• Yielding
• Action/Behavior

• Website/E-commerce
• User has got there by own actions strong
• Literacy, language, culture are hurdles
• Multimedia, interaction, links are advantages
• Can initiate buying, ful-fillment of intellectual
  services

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Agency Theory

• Managers act as agents for owners
• In community tourism, the community is the
  owner of the property, although this is
  questionable.
• The operators manage the business.
• There is an inherent conflict of interest.

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Generalizability

• What is a community?
• To what extent does EVERY community require a
  dual or even multi-interest approach?
• Is the standard SDLC problematic?
• How do various communities differ? Is any
  business a community?

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Your Thoughts?