The European e-Business Market Watch: ICT adoption and E-Business Activity in Tourism

This paper builds on findings from the e-Business W@tch, a project on behalf of the European Commission with the main aim to monitor and analyse the impact of e-business across different sectors of the European economy. One of the sectors surveyed is tourism. Some core results of the detailed study on ICT adoption and e-business activity in tourism (2005) shall be presented, here. In contrast to the common public perception of tourism as one of the forerunners in e-business, empirical data show that this is only true in the field of e-marketing and e-sales. In other areas of e-business — like internal business processes or supply-side activities — tourism companies score below the average of other economic sectors. This paper analyses the status of e-business and ICT-adoption in 2005 and discusses the significance of and reasons for doing e-business as perceived by tourism companies.