The Tourist as Value Creator on the Internet

The rapid increase in capacity and usage of the Internet in recent years provides exciting opportunities for structural change in the design, marketing and creation of tourism services. Many businesses, government agencies, and researchers have recognized this potential impact of the Internet. For example, in the domain of marketing research, Hoffman and Novak (1996) highlight the opportunity of the Internet to provide many-to-many communication by offering an efficient platform through which individuals and organizations can send and receive communications. This possibility could greatly affect marketing communications and branding strategies because it allows individual tourists to influence destination images directly by sharing detailed tourism experience information with other tourists. Alba et al. (1997), in addition, discuss the opportunities the Internet to provides as an electronic marketplace through which increasingly interactive consumer-supplier relationships can develop. For example, the Internet may allow tourists to bypass traditional travel agents and communicate with accommodation and transportation providers directly.