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Over the last few years, Information Technologies (IT) have had a growing impact on tourism promotion, marketing and sales. With the advent of new forms of IT, a novel type of tourism, e-tourism, has emerged that is radically transforming the tourism industry. The tourism area is one of those industries which can gain huge synergy effects from the use of the Internet. This research addresses the issue of competitive advantge for the tourism area by using Information Technologies, in particulr the Internet and its development in the North-east India . More and more people now prefer to search for information on tourism destinations and offers on the Internet. But in most cases it is not developing countries that benefit from new tourism opportunities. Most information on tourism opportunities in developing countries is generated, updated and marketed online by major international service providers based in developed countries. The Aim of the paper is finding out the Development of e-tourism in North-East India to improvise the future prospects along with the global markets. The Position and Prospects of Development of e-tourism in the fields of new tools and technologies i.e on-line services like bookings of Airline tickets, Railway reservation, Bus tickets, Hotel Reservation , Resort Reservations , Car Rentals , Organizing a business meeting in a Hotel/Resort , Participation in a particular Festival or ,events , enjoying a match and also Negotiating a Price, asking for discounts, Making on-line payments , Exchanging quarries and Ideas , Interaction and also some newly developed tools like CRM(Customer Relation Management) and VCIT ( Value Chain Integration Tourism) has been examine by reviewing various Literatures . The paper proceeds with the Development of e-tourism in NE India and a brief explanation about the above mentioned with respect to the global market. The next section will be the comparing position of North East in the Development of e-tourism with the Global scenario and the suggestion for future prospects.
Keywords: e-tourism , development, north-east .
Introduction :
During the last decade of 20th century, India saw the emergence of e-tourism, its innovation and growth. It is because of the online revolution and its utility where the tourists are more interested to get information on destinations, facilities, availabilities, prices, geography & climate and present status of friendly relation. This led to the development of e-commerce strategies in tourism industry and more services in the form of online hotel booking, flight booking, car booking, bus booking came into forefront as online services provided by the big online travel industries like Travelchacha.com, Makemytrip.com, Yatra.com, Cleartrip.com, Ezeego1.com, Arzoo.com, Travelguru.com, Travel.indiatimes.com, ixigo.com, travelocity.co.in etc. On these sites, the travelers have wide option of exploring details of hotels, flights, cars, buses and other allied services. Before their departure, travelers are researching their journey on the Internet and the number of users is multiplying day-by-day. The survey has proved that India has shown clearly as one of the emerging leisure online travel market which attracted millions of travelers to explore the itineraries and their details on the one hand and seeking online services for flight booking, hotel booking, car booking, bus booking etc. on the other. The survey further clarified the future perspective of E-tourism in India by putting a figure of potential earning expected to be a $2-billion.
The main strategies for the accomplishment of effective E-Tourism implementation are increasing information via electronic device (e-information), creating trust between tourists and entrepreneurs, developing e-commerce capacity, marketing, and promoting the authorities to be the e-marketplace for tourism. The strong and sustainable expansion of the international tourism activity is one of the most remarkable socio-economic phenomena of our time. Tourism is now one of the world’s largest industries comprising all the socioeconomic activities that are directly or indirectly involved in providing services to tourists. The revenues generated by the international tourism activity have grown by an average annual rate of 11 percent over the past five decades. This rate of growth far outstrips that of the world economy as a whole and makes tourism one of the largest categories of international trade. Although recent trends in international tourism indicate that the tourism activity is still concentrated in the developed regions of Europe and the Americas, a substantial proliferation of new tourism destinations is also observed in the developing regions. Particularly, the market share in world international tourism has been increasing for Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and Africa. For many countries in those regions, international tourism is now considered an important source of foreign exchange earnings and employment. Therefore, tourism has been given much attention in the national development strategies of many developing countries and recently placed on the agenda of many international conferences on sustainable development. Considering their rich and diverse natural, geographic, historical and cultural heritage assets, the OIC countries have, in fact, a high potential for the development of a sustainable international tourism sector. Yet, considering their modest share in the world tourism market and the concentration of their international tourism activity in a small number of countries, it seems that a large part of their inherent tourism potential remains unutilised. The desirable levels of tourism development in many OIC countries, and in the OIC region as a whole, have not yet been achieved. Therefore, albeit a crucial factor, the potential of inherent natural tourism resources cannot, unless properly planned and managed, by itself make a successful tourism industry. Respondents considered that the main benefits of e-commerce for tourism enterprises are ‘providing easy access to information on tourism services,’ ‘providing better information on tourism services,’ and ‘providing convenience for customers’. This result implies that respondents are less aware of many other benefits of e-commerce, such as ‘creating new markets,’ ‘improving customer services,’ ‘establishing interactive relationships with customers’, ‘reducing operating cost’, ‘interacting with other business partners’, and ‘founding new business partners’.