The Evolution of eTourism Research A Case of ENTER Conference
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Presentation done by Shahab Pourfakhimi, during "E-learning" workshop, of the ENTER2015 eTourism conference.
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The Evolution of eTourism Research A Case of ENTER Conference
- 1. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 1 The Evolution of eTourism Research A Case of ENTER Conference Shahab Pourfakhimi Tianyu Ying University of Otago, New Zealand Shahab.pourfakhimi@otago.ac.nz Tianyu.ying@otago.ac.nz www.otago.ac.nz/tourism
- 2. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 2 We aimed to… TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE DEVELOPMENT TREND of eTOURISM RESEARCH
- 3. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 3 Thus we analyzed Major Themes & 972 RESEARCH PAPERS Trends in 1994-2014
- 4. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 4 And we proposed A FOR THE CATEGORISATION OF STRUCTURAL MODEL eTOURISM RESEARCH & FOUR PHASES FOR THE EVOLUTION eTOURISM RESEARCH
- 5. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 5 A BRIEF BACKGROUND RESEARCH METHOD THE CATEGORISATION MODEL OVERALL RESULTS THE FOUR PHASES OF RESEARCH EVOLUTION
- 6. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 6 RESEARCH BACKGROUND eTOURISM research field is essentially eTOURISM is a complex research field
- 7. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 7 eTOURISM complexity justifies research on: RESEARCH BACKGROUND
- 8. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 8 Some examples of such research works RESEARCH BACKGROUND 2005 2007 2004
- 9. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 9 2008 Some examples of such research works (continued...) RESEARCH BACKGROUND 2009 2011
- 10. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 10 Some examples of such research works (continued...) RESEARCH BACKGROUND 2011 2013
- 11. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 11 Some examples of such research works (continued...) RESEARCH BACKGROUND 2013 2014
- 12. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 12 Scope Coverage Sampling Sample Size Method (Research & interpretation) O’Connor & Murphy (2004) Hospitality 2003-2004 Full-papers 12 JournaLs N/A Literature review Leung & Law (2005) Hospitality 1985-2004 Full-papers 3 Journals 130 Content Analaysis (Subject Categorisation) Leung & Law (2007) H&T 1986-2005 Full-papers 6 Journals 195 Co-authorship and bibliometric analysis Buhalis & Law (2008) Management (H&T) 1988-2008 Key-word search in database 149 Literature review Law, Leung & Buhalis (2009) H&T 2005-2007 Full papers 57 Journal 215 Content analysis Categorisation on three dimensions (supply/ demand/ tech) Marketinig activities Ip, Law & Lee (2011a) Website evaluation (H&T) 1996-2009 Key-word search 68 Content analysis Caetgorisation Ip, Law & Lee (2011b) Hospitality 1998-2008 Full Papers 8 journals 88 Content analysis – Literature review Law, Leung, Au & Lee (2013) Hospitality 1966-2011 Keyword search Only one journal (CQ) 95 Content analysis (IT Field, source, authors, collaboration) Li, Buhalis, Zhang (2013) Tourism 2000-2011 Keyword search 262 Content analysis – Multidiscepliniary appraoch Law, Buhalis, Cobanoglu (2014) H&T 2009-2013 Key-word search in database 107 Content analysis – Categorization and literature review Some examples of such research works (continued...) RESEARCH BACKGROUND
- 13. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 13 RESEARCH BACKGROUND Previous research in this field have been largely limited to the use of JOURNAL ARTICLES ignoring other scientific communication mediums such as 1 Including conference proceedings has been previously recommended (Law et al. 2014) Law, R., Buhalis, D., & Cobanoglu, C. (2014). Progress on information and communication technologies in hospitality and tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(5), 727–750.
- 14. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 14 Previous research on ENTER conference proceedings RESEARCH BACKGROUND - 745 papers published until 2010 - Bibliometric analysis - Longitudinal, regional, individual and institutional analysis - Citation analysis - Academic foundation analysis - Research is constructed substantially on the basis of other fields
- 15. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 15 Research Method BIBLIOMETRICS The measurement of ‘properties of documents, and of document-related processes’ Borgman & Furner, 2002 Techniques for analyzing research contributions, themes and trends in a particular field. LITERATURE REVIEW CONTENT ANALYSIS META-ANALYSIS Benckendorf, 2009 Relational techniques Benckendorff, P. (2009). Themes and trends in Australian and New Zealand tourism research: A social network analysis of citations in two leading journals (1994–2007). Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 16(1), 1–15. Borgman, C.L., & Furner, J. (2002). Scholarly communication and bibliometrics. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 36, 3–72.
- 16. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 16 Research Method Relational techniques: Common in tourism; have been used to investigate key themes and trends and the evolution; the key objective of is tracking the evolution of tourism as a field of research. Benckendorf, 2009 Benckendorff, P. (2009). Themes and trends in Australian and New Zealand tourism research: A social network analysis of citations in two leading journals (1994–2007). Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 16(1), 1–15. Yuan, Y., Gretzel, U., & Tseng, Y.-H. (2014). Revealing the nature of contemporary tourism research: Extracting common subject areas through bibliographic coupling. International Journal of Tourism Research. Keywords are commonly used, though their meaning may change with the context Yuan et al., 2014
- 17. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 17 Research Method 972 research papers published 1994-2014 in ENTER Conference The leading international research platform of eTourism Liu et al, 2011 A major force behind the consolidation and formation of eTourism research Buhalis & Law, 2008 Buhalis, D., & Law, R. (2008). Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29(4), 609–623. Liu, W., Zhong, L., Ip, C., & Leung, D. (2011). An analysis of research on tourism information technology: The case of ENTER proceedings. In R. Law, M. Fuchs, & F. Ricci (Eds.), Information and communication technologies in tourism 2011 (pp. 293–304). Berlin: Springer.
- 18. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 18 Research Method
- 19. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 19 Categorization model Buhalis & Law, 2008 Engel et al. (1990) model of consumer behavior Law et al., 2009 Law et al. 2014 Various models including Kotler et al. (1999) Various models Engel, J. F., Blackwell, R. D., & Miniard, P. W. (1990). Consumer behavior. Oak Brook, IL: Dryden Press. Buhalis, D., & Law, R. (2008). Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29(4), 609–623. Kotler, P., Bowen, J. T., Makens, J. C., Xie, Y., & Liang, C. (2006). Marketing for hospitality and tourism (Vol. 893). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Law, R., Leung, R., & Buhalis, D. (2009). Information technology applications in hospitality and tourism: A review of publications from 2005 to 2007. Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 26(5–6), 599–623. Law, R., Buhalis, D., & Cobanoglu, C. (2014). Progress on information and communication technologies in hospitality and tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(5), 727–750.
- 20. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 20 Categorization model Limitations of previous models Lack in ideal reflection of eTourism multidimensionality Lack in categorizing research based on some important research features such as research question, method of research and purpose 2
- 21. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 21 RESEARCH METHOD eTOURISM RESEARCH SUBJECT ICT SUBJECTS TOURISM SUBJECT BUSINESS SUBJECT RESEARCH PURPOSE ICTS APPLICATION ICTS DEVELOPMENT ICTS ADOPTION ICTS IMPACT THEORY TOURISM INDUSTRY SECTORS RESEARCH FOCUS SUPPLIER TECHNOLOGY CONSUMER EVALUATE BUILD Subject : “branch of knowledge in a field of study” Yuan et al., 2014 eTourism: “an amalgam of ICT, business and tourism” Buhalis, 2003 Buhalis, D. (2003). eTourism: Information technology for strategic tourism management. Essex: Pearson Education Yuan, Y., Gretzel, U., & Tseng, Y.-H. (2014). Revealing the nature of contemporary tourism research: Extracting common subject areas through bibliographic coupling. International Journal of Tourism Research. Categorization model
- 22. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 22 Categorization model Sector: “subcategories of tourism and hospitality industries such as hotels and destinations” Buhalis, 2003 Buhalis, D. (2003). eTourism: Information technology for strategic tourism management. Essex: Pearson Education
- 23. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 23 Categorization model Buhalis, D., & Law, R. (2008). Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29(4), 609–623. Focus: “focus of researcher on developing the research problem” Based on widely accepted axes of eTourism research Buhalis & Law, 2008
- 24. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 24 Categorization model Methodology Research design Theoretical models & techniques of investigation
- 25. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 25 Categorization model Goal-directedness of the researcher Purposefulness of the task March & Smith (1995) IT Research Framework March, S. T., & Smith, G. F. (1995). Design and natural science research on information technology. Decision Support Systems, 15(4), 251–266.
- 26. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 26 Categorization model Construction and demonstration of the possibility Utility Ability Creation Design Architecture How well an artefact works Operationality Ease of use Usability
- 27. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 27 Categorization model 1
- 28. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 28 Research Method
- 29. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 29 Research Focus Technology 43% Supply 37% Demand 20% Overall results Half of all adoption & Impacts Mainly adoption & Impacts 40% development, 25% application
- 30. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 30 Research Purpose Development 38% Adoption 31% Impact 15% Application 15% Theory 1% Overall results
- 31. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 31 Top 10 Tourism and Business Subjects Groups Management 30% Marketing 22% Consumer behaviour 17% SMTEs 6% Distribution 5% Satisfaction 3% Research 3% Culture & Heritage 3% eLearning/Training 2% Overall results
- 32. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 32 Overall results Top 10 ICT Subject Groups ICTs (In general) 25% Websites 19% Smart systems 16% Evaluation/optimization 13% Social media/web 2.0 12% Information systems 11% Mobile/wireless 6% Online booking/sale 8% User information search 8%
- 33. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 33 Overall results
- 34. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 34 Overall trend (Focus)
- 35. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 35 Overall trend (Purpose)
- 36. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 36 Overall trend (IT Subject)
- 37. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 37 Periodical trend 2
- 38. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 38 Stage I: The Age of Information Systems (1994-1999) Dominance of technology-oriented research Insignificant share of consumer-oriented studies More than 30% information system studies Dominance of development studies Supply-oriented research began to emerge The peak of application studies Ends with the drop in the development, technology-oriented & information system studies It signals the shift of focus towards adoption
- 39. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 39 Stage 2: The Age of ICT adoption & Website (2000-2005) 60% of research concerns websites or ICTs Supply-oriented research domination More than 40% adoption studies Adoption studies peak Mobile systems research began to emerge Demand-side studies began to grow Social-network studies began to emerge End with the drop in the supply oriented & adoption studies
- 40. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 40 Stage 3: The Age of Consumer & Social Media Studies (2006-2011) Technology-oriented studies raised again concerning smart & mobile technologies Social media/network studies started their domination and maintained their top position among ICT subject till now Impacts studies began to emerge Demand-side studies continued the growth Location based studies reached their peak Impact studies grew in relation with social media UGC and similar keywords were the top picked keywords Ends with the stabilization of the share of the social media studies
- 41. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 41 Stage 4: The Age of social, smart and mobile eTourism research (2012- …) Social/media remained the top subject Adoption studies raised again after almost a decade decreasing trend Smart systems and mobile systems significantly grew Social media impact studies reduced Social media adoption studies replaced their impact studies UGC has lost its top position in top keywords Mobile marketing and social marketing raised as the new popular keywords
- 42. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 42 Top three subjects in each phase Period 1 1994-1999 Period 2 2000-2005 Period 3 2006-2011 Period 4 2012-2014 Information Systems (33%) ICT (34%) ICT (27%) Social Media (31%) ICTs (16%) Websites (23%) Websites (25%) Smart Systems (19%) Smart Systems (15%) Evaluation (18%) Social Media (20%) Mobile Systems (17%)
- 43. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 43 Conclusion • The proposed model was beneficial in categorization of the eTourism research for the purpose of identification of the research trend
- 44. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 44 Implications • Proposing an effective model for the categorization of the eTourism research • Understanding the development trend of eTourism research pursuing the development of ICT technologies • Understanding the most recent research trend • Revealing the less studies aspects of eTourism research and introducing gaps and research opportunities
- 45. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 45 Major Limitations • Reliance on a single source of data • Classification based on abstract, rather than full length • Subjective yet systematic approach in classification • The possibility of demonstrating organizers' inclination rather than academic society Further research • Use of less subjective approaches (i.e. citation analysis) • Expansion of the scope to include other sources such as dissertations and journal papers
- 46. ENTER 2015 Research Track Slide Number 46 Thank You
Editor's Notes
- Good afteroon ladies and gentelman, My name is Shahab Pourfakhimi, I am a PhD student from the amazingly beautiful University of Otago, in New Zealand, so far away where I actually study tourism right beside where Penguins live I came all the way from the middle earth to here, to presents our research project, which has been performed in the course of last year in the University of Otago department of Tourism, with the generous support of Internet NZ foundation. The mentioned research, has been a very broad and extensive in depth evaluation of the historical evolution trend of eTourism research, and a part of this research project, concerning the investigation of the history of academic works presented in the 21 years of ENTER conference is the subject of this presentation entitled the evolution of eTourism research, A case of ENTER conference.
- The overall aim of this research project, was to investigate the development trend of eTourism research and to understand how eTourism research has been evolved within the previous two decades. Especially we were keen to understand, how the development of the various generations of IT development, has been mirrored in the eTourism research. Among all the other goals we had, was the fact that we wanted to know what were the main points of focus and interest of researchers in different time periods, and to find out which parts of the industry, or tourism phenamenon have been more concerned by eTourism research, and which parts have been less extensively looked at.
- One of the measures we took, which is the subject of this presentation, was to analyse this trend by examining the major themes and trends of the researcher papers published within previous 21 editions of this very confernece. We thus went trough 972 research papers, and tried to figure out how the history of eTourism research has been created
- After spending over four month for our investigations, our project brought up two main significant findings which are discussed in the current paper among the res. First and foremost, we developed a structural model for the effective and multidimensional categorization of eTourism research. This model has been found suitable for this task, and it enabled us to have a broad understanding of the nature of research in this field, to track its trend, and to find out how some parts of Tourism industry, and some parts of IT technologies, have been under the careful scrutiny of the researchers or were comparatively overlooked by them. Inspecting the periodical themes of the publications, we were also able to identify four distinctive stages for the development of eTourism stages. Each of those four stages, to some extent represent a certain generation of the IT developments, from pre-internet era to Web 3.0 . Thus we were somehow able to see how each of those stages of IT development, have been perfectly mirrored in the academic field of eTourism.
- Today, after a brief introdution of our research background and its method, I will present our categorisation model, and the overall results of our research, as well the characteristics of the mentioned four research stages.
- As you all perfectly know better than anyone else, due to its multidimensionality, rapid growth and rapid evolution as well its broad scope and diversity of research problems, eTourism research field, is a very complex and essentially diverse field of academic research.
- Therefore this complexity, calls for research on identification of its trends and categorization of its works as well as reporting on its findings and its concerned scopes. There are also several research works which tried to review the history of research in this field, and provide a comprehensive understanding of the progress of research. They aimed to consolidate the findings of the hundreds of different research works, and provide a general picture of research progress. Many of those works are among the most highly acknowledged pieces of literature in Tourism and Marketing fields and have been referred and cited by thousands of other researchers. We shall now take a look at some of its examples.
- As we’re rapidly going through some examples of such research works, I highlight some of the characteristics of those research works. For example as we can see in this slide, some of the previous works have been concerned only with a certain sector out of the broad spectrum of the tourism industry. In this case, Hospitality.
- While some works, reviewed the entire history of eTourism research to the date, some other works chose to cover only a certain timeframe within its whole hisotry.
- As we can see, such type of research is trending, and whle some works cover a large number of various sources and journals, some other chose to have a closer look at the development research published in a smaller, or even a single source of literature.
- And among the rest, these two works are the most recent examples of those research.
- Thus several previous works surronding this subject, greatly vary in certain characteristics, such as their scope, their coverage and their sample size. Yet most of these literature used to some extent similar models of analysis, such as systematic literature review and content analysis. Quantitative analysis have been also to some extent used by some scholars.
- However majority of previous works in this field, concentrated only on one type of scientific communication mediums, which is Journal articles. As you know, journal papers are not the only medium of scientific communication, as conference papers, research notes and dissertations are also other types which have been largely overlooked by the previous authors. Professor Law, Professor Buhalis and Professor Cobanoglu have specifically recommended the inclusion of conference papers in this field.
- ENTER Conference proceaedings however have been previousley analyzed at least twice from a bibliometric and collaboration/citation analysis point of view and the results of theses investigation have been previsouly presented in the same conference.
- All the previously mentioned research works, can be categorised as the bibliometric type of research, as they use bibliometric methods to analyse the research products. Bibiliometric is the measurement of the various properties of research documents and includes a very vast spectrum of different quantative and qualitative methods. Literature review, content analysis and meta-analysis are among the most well-known relational bibliometric techniques which have been largely used by researchers to analyse the research contributions, and their themes and trends.
- These relational techniques are very common in tourism as we saw some of their examples. Howtever, diffirent researchers may choose differnet units of analysis for their inspection. Titles, keywords, abstracts and statistical techniques are among those units. However as it was recently cautioned by Yuan, Professor Gretzel and their co-author, the use of keywords as the unit of analysis has to be considered with caution, as the meaning keyword may change over the time, and also with the context.
- Therefore instead of relying only on keywords, we added titles and abstracts to our analysis, and we analyzed 972 papers based on their titles, kewords and abstracts to identify their trends. The reasons of choosing ENTER conference as the subject of our inspection, is quite obvious, as it’s the leading platform of research in this field.
- After data collection, and refining and cleaning our data, we needed to construct a robust categorisation model for our analysis which enables us to categorise the research, suitable for the multidimensionality and complexity of this research field.
- Previous authors, have looked at the development trend of this research field, from supply, technology and demand viewpoints, and such categorisation has been widely accepted by almost all the researchers in this field. Professor Buhalis and Professor Law called these three elements, as the axes of the eTourism research. Yet different researchers used various categorisation models, to categorise research under each segment. From the demand side, it seems Engel, Blackwell and Miniard model of consumer behaviour has been the most widely used one.
- However, allthough those models have been influential for identifiynig for example the various impacts of IT on different aspects of tourism supply and demand, they are not ideal as the universal categorisation for this field, as they at least lack in two major elements of representing multidimensionality and categorising research based on some of its most important features such as methd, purpose and nature of research question.
- Thus we opted for the development of a new categorisation model. Quite obviousley, subect of a research, is among the most important features of every research work, and we also used it as one the main elements of our model. However, as eTourism is defined as the combination of ICT, Tourism and Business, every research work in this field, should be essentially concerned with at least two of these subjects, which are tourism and ICTs. Quite obviousley, if a research work is only concerned with only one of them, it is not categorised as eTourism research, because it will be a pure tourism or a pure IT work. Morever, research works concerning ICT and Business can only be concerned as eTourism research, when at least there is another Tourism subject present, or the research related to the business, marketing or management of a sector of tourism industry.
- Thus we added sector to our model as well. And it is also quite imporant to know the extend and magnitude of eTourism research conducted with respect to each sector.
- After research subject, perhaps another important feature of research work is the focus of its researcher. Is the researcher, upon creating its research, focusing on consumers, suppliers or the technology itself. These focus dimensions, are of course created based on the widely accepted axes of eTourism research, presented by Professor Buhalis and Law. Any subject from the eTourism domain can be studied from at least one of these perspectives. The rationale behind this argument is based on the multidimensional aspect of eTourism, and the complexity of Tourism and Business paradigms. eTourism research fundamentally fit in the domains of both ICT and tourism (or management) and the latter field(s) can be studied from supplier and consumer viewpoints and therefore any eTourism research problem can be studied from at least one of the above perspectives.
- Method, presenting categorisation of research works based on their various research methodology and research design is another part of this model.
- And finally, the most important element of our model, is the categorisation of research based on its purpose. For this categorisation, we referred to the widely acceprted categorisation of IT research works framework, presented by March and Smith, and we modified it a bit to apply it on to eTourism research.
- March and Smith discussed that the purpose of research works in IT can be either towards Bulding or Evaluating an artefact. By building, we mean that research wants to show that creation of a technology, device or product, is possible. Evalution research works however, intend to show how well a certain product or artefact may perform. As eTourism research works are also essentially an IT research project, same categorisation can also apply on them. Thus as build category concerns two notions of possibility and constructuions, we can divide them in to two categories of Application and Development. Appliciation group in our model encompass all the research aiming to present the utilities and abilities of ICTs for tourism. Development studies however, I mostly concerned with creation, design and architecutre of such technologoies. On the other hand, evaluate studies can either evaluate the performance of a product, or its impacts. So similary they can be divided in to two categories of adoption and impacts. While adoption studies are concerned with operationality, ease of use and evaluation of the usability of a certain technology or product, the impact studies are concerned with the potential or actual impacts of them.
- The other two dimensions of the March and Smith (1995) model, theory and justify, are replaced with a distinctive category (v) to classify the research works studying the ‘theories’ and theoretical aspects of eTourism. To Summarize, ‘application’ studies include research investigating the applications and potentials of a certain technological production - often at the early stages of the development of a technological product. ‘Development’ studies discuss ICT with the purpose of design and creation. “Adoption” and ‘impact’ studies usually investigate the aftermath of the development. Whilst the adoption studies are concerned with evaluating the use, performance, usability or acceptance of a technology, the impact studies are concerned with studying the outcomes, effects and consequences of that use. Subject to the validity of research problem, eTourism researchers can design their studies to investigate the ICTs subjects with any of the above purposes from any of the above focus perspectives. The essential factor is that the studied ICT subject should be either concurrently studied with a tourism subject or in the domain of tourism and hospitality sector or both. An eTourism research often addresses several subjects, therefore in this study most of papers have been categorised with more than one subject, as it reflects the multidimensional nature of eTourism. However, each paper is categorised with only one focus and one purpose. Here is an important consideration in the use of above model. A research work might fit into more than one group of research focus or purpose, as researchers often address several research questions or investigate them from different perspectives. In this study, the dominant purpose and focus of papers have been considered for the purpose of classification.
- Following the development of our model, we started analysing data and categorising research based on our model. We firstly needed to have a guide list of ICT, Tourism and Business subjects to use it as the basis of our categorisation based on subjects. We developed such a list by analysing, consolidating and grouping of 1711 unique keywords represented in our papers and then compared the list with the list of all subjects reported by various research works and also the chapter titles chosen by editors. We ended up with an intial list of 67 different ICT subjects and we alalysed the papers based on this list. After the classification, through several rounds of discussion and consolidation, we finally grouped our subjects into 37 groups of ICT subjects. After classification of papers based on their subject, sector, focus and purpose, we analzed the trend of findings.
- Overall, as it can be seen in this slide, 43% of all research works published in the history of this conference has been focused on the technological aspects of eTourism itself. Supply side of tourism has been more concerned by eTourism scholard than demand and while demand side are more studie with the purpose of investigating the impacts of ICTs on demand, and the adoption or use of these technologies by travellers, supply side studies have also contained a good porportion of development and application studies. This in general showcase a potential gap in eTourism research, concerning the study of development of ICTs and their applications, with a demand-side perspective.
- In general, more than two third of all eTourism research, have been conducte with the purpose of analysing the design and archicutre of such technologies and its products, or investigating its use and adotions by either supply or demand side. However, the share of impact and application studies have been signifcantly less than other two groups, potentially signaling another enaquality in eTourism research. As you can see here, far less attention has been paid in to the theoreticial and philosophical aspects of eTourism research than on its practical aspects.
- From a tourism and business perspectives, management, marketing and consumer behaviour subject groups are the most highly addressed subjects. You can see the rest of relatively more addressed subjects here.
- But from the ICT perspective, in addition to the group of subjects related to the ICTs in general sense (such as internet, web, information technologies, etc), Websites, Smart Systems, Evaluation and Omptimization, Social Media, Information systems, Mobile and wireless systems, Online booking and user information search have attracted the most of eTourism researchers’ attention. Here we should note than each of these categories encompass a relatively wide group of subjects and technologies. For example Social media group includes everything related to the social media, social networks, UGC, online reviews, eWoM, Web 2.0, etc.
- From the sector perspective, majority of eTourism research presented in this conference have been concerned with only two sectors of Tourism industry, Destination and hospitality. Thus the rest of sectors, such as transportation, attractions, leisure, entertainment, distribution and research aspects of tourism, have been comparatively overlooked.
- A dramatic growth in consumer-oriented research was observed increasing from 9% in 2000 to 35% in 2005. From 2009 onwards the periodical share of consumer-oriented research remained at about a 30% level. An opposite trend was observed for technology-oriented research. While in the first two periods (94-99), technology-oriented research was the mainstream trend; supply-oriented studies had been the largest group from 2000 until 2005. Since 2008 the three groups have had a convergent trend and a nearly equal share.
- This one is the historical trend of analying literature based on their purpose. As you can see here, developmet research, for example has been larlgely popular in the early stages and from the entire course of last decade, but they have lost their popularity since 2010, and once more adoption and usablity and adoption studies have gained popularity. It seems application studies, are also increasing in popularity after a long time of negligene.
- Looking at the subject trends, we again see that the mainstream subjects have been largely different in different time periods. While information systems were popular in pre internet and web 1.0 era, the shift has been later towards ICTs, Websites and recently social media.
- But comparing these three trend all together, will create a much more clear picture of how eTourism research has been evolved within previous decades. Only by comparing these three graphs togehtr, we can comprehensively understand the nature of eTouism research in each of the four stages which we identified.
- Let us begin with the first phase. The age of Information Systems: From 1994 to 1999 is associated with the dominance of technology-oriented research and the insignificant share of consumer-oriented studies. This represents an era when the academic focus was on the automation of industry operations. More than one third of studies in this period are associated with information systems. Multimedia and early smart systems were the other popular subjects. This period begins with the dominance of development research, largely dedicated to the study of the architecture of the above technological products. However within this period supply oriented studies with the focus on application and adoption grew steadily. In 1998, application studies reached their highest rate of 38%, as researchers focused on the investigation of the potential applications of new ICT developments in tourism and hospitality industries. Discussions about the adoption and applications of information technologies grew rapidly from 1996 and discussion about online reservation, especially from the development point of view began to emerge. This period ends with a drop in the number of technology-oriented and information systems papers as the mainstream focus of researchers shifted from development to the adoption of technology by the supply side stakeholders.
- The age of the adoption of ICTs and the website development: About 60% of the presented papers from 2000 to 2005 were discussing either websites or information technologies in general. Supply-oriented research was the major trend as the adoption studies reached its highest rate in this period. More than 40% of papers in these years studied the adoption of ICTs, websites and online reservation. The study of mobile systems and social networks began to emerge in this phase. While the trend of application studies decreased, demand-side studies after 2004 began to flourish, reaching a share of 24% at 2005. Consumer studies however remained largely related to the websites and information technologies in general. Technology oriented studies in this period were largely related to the recommender and decision support systems. Apart from the tourism and hospitality; internet, information technology, websites and recommender systems were the most popular author-picked keywords in this era. This period is identified by the predominant trend of the supply-oriented and websites development research and a growing focus of researchers on the adoption of websites by the supply side stakeholders. This period ends with a decline in the popularity of the websites, supplier-oriented and adoption studies, as the attention of researchers shifted toward a newer generation of ICT applications.
- The year 2006 marks a decline in the research of websites. However technology-oriented studies began a second period of growth, this time largely in relationship with the smart and mobile technologies. The impact studies began to gain popularity and continued to grow reaching a 30% share in 2011. Following the emergence of web 2.0 0 (o'Reilly, 2009) applications, from 2008 there has been a dramatic rise in the number of research studying web 2.0, social media, social networks and user generated content. The share of these studies rocketed from 4% to 25% in 2008 and then to 40% at 2011. From 2008 this group remained the most popular subject with at least 28% share. Consumer-oriented studies continued to grow and reached a peak of 36% in 2010. The year 2008 was the turning point for the location based technologies as the share of this group reached to its peak of 12%. Impact studies were mostly related to the group of social media and social networks. The majority (83%) of the consumer-oriented research has been associated with the websites or social media. User generated content and its similar keywords (e.g. eWoM and online reviews) have been the top author-picked keywords surpassing tourism, recommender systems and hospitality. This stage is identified with the overall dominance of web 2.0, growth of consumer-oriented and the decline of research about web 1.0 technologies such as websites and information systems. However, the stabilisation of the share of social media studies and the beginning of a second period of rise for application and adoption studies marks a new era of eTourism research where researchers shifted their attention to the business potentials of smart, mobile and social technologies.
- The age of social, smart and mobile eTourism research: Since 2012, social media and network has remained the most popular subject with a constant rate. However two other groups, namely smart systems and mobile systems, have gained a significant growing rate. The smart systems group has reached a 20% share. Gamification, internet of things and big data has emerged for the first time. Perhaps the most significant trend was the emergence of a second growing period for the adoption studies as its share rose from 25% to 44% and surpassed the development studies for the first time after 10 years. With a closer look at these studies it was observed that the number of research investigating the impacts of social media subjects has reduced and instead the number of research investigating their adoption has risen dramatically. Within the last few years, user generated content gradually has lost its position among the most frequently used keywords and social interaction and mobile marketing replaced its place. Reviewing the literature that has have been associated with these subjects revealed that while in the last years of 2000s, the study of social media has been mostly concerned with their impact on consumers and suppliers; in 2010s this focus turned to the use and adoption of these technologies by consumers and suppliers