Web Services as a technology to support a global tourism offer

The wide diffusion of disintermediating Internet technologies poses a threat to the role of tourism intermediaries. Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services look to be one of the few practical ways to develop operational systems able to provide customers effective tools to satisfy their needs and to ease the travel intermediary chores in a highly dynamic market environment. This paper presents an implementation under development and analyses the advantages of the solution adopted. Possible future developments and extensions are outlined.