Services as one of my 2015-2016 lectures at the University of Bergamo. It's stimulus material, posted to improve communication with current students. It's not interesting for the academia.

1. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
IT for Tourism
Managers.
Services
#13 .:. December 17, 2015
1

2. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
What We Are Talking About Today
1. Service Functions As Seen By Managers…
2. … And By Users
3. Practicalities & External Links
4. E-commerce, Security & Privacy
5. Services & Places
2#13 .:. December 17, 2015

3. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Calendar. December 17, 2015
Thursday, Dec 17
Services
Are What You Offer
To Your Guests
3
Tuesday, Dec 1st
Digital Devices
Tuesday, Dec 9
Digital Disruptions
Wednesday, Dec 10
Quality
Tuesday, Dec 15
Analytics
Wednesday, Dec 16
Content
#13 .:. December 17, 2015
Tuesday, Dec 22
Evaluation
Wednesday, Dec 23
Conclusions

4. 4
Services Are What You Offer To Your Guests
Image credit to North Star Cruises Australia - Courtesy of Tourism Australia

5. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Service Functions As Seen By Managers…
Parallel to the questions about the website’s content, our questionnaire
indagates about service functions.
The question about managers service compliance asks whether – generally
speaking – the website’s managers could feel satisfied of the services that
their website delivers to users.
These services include e-commerce, meteo, transport info, maps, and the like.
Like for content, we must consider this question, because any professional
evaluation would require to answer it. But we can’t interview the managers
of our chosen destination, and therefore can only make a guess.
5#13 .:. December 17, 2015

6. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Service Functions As Seen By Users
Again. Exactly like for content, when we have to
evaluate the users service compliance, we can
pretend to be tourists ourselves.
In most destinations, weather conditions influence
tourists’ choice.
The availability of meteo information – easily
reachable while navigating the website – is therefore
a needed service.
6#13 .:. December 17, 2015

7. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Practicalities & External Links
Another very practical need for tourists visiting a
destination – or planning a visit from their home –
regards information about local transport services.
Does the website provide or link useful information on
local transport?
Pay attention! Local transport are often a complicated
business. A DMO website must not necessarily copy,
say, all the timetables of local bus lines!
A link to the transport agency website may be enough.
7#13 .:. December 17, 2015

8. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
E-commerce
This is also the case of e-commerce services. The website
may provide them directly – from inside, if you accept this
wording – or simply link to external e-commerce services.
(Perhaps you remember that during our meeting on
November 17 we briefly discussed the options a DMO may
adopt about accommodation e-commerce.
Basically, these options are: 1. Doing nothing; 2. Linking to
the individual hotels’ websites; 3. Building an indipendent
platform; 4. Dealing with OTAs or metasearches.)
8#13 .:. December 17, 2015

9. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
E-commerce Service Compliance
This flashback to November 17 brings us to the point that e-commerce
functions may be promised by a website, but not fully provided in practice.
So a specific question on e-commerce service compliance should be asked.
• Do the e-commerce functions, if any, work?
• And, if they work, do they really fulfil the tourists’ needs?
Even more than other answers of our list, this question on e-commerce
service compliance may lead you to take notes, make observations, suggest
hypotheses by writing in the final free-text area of our questionnaire.
9#13 .:. December 17, 2015

10. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
E-commerce, Security & Privacy
Substantial questions about e-commerce functions concern transaction
security and privacy. Quite obviously, our questionnaire asks these questions.
Let’s start from privacy.
Privacy is a concept of Anglo-Saxon origin linked to the idea of human rights,
which concerns the right of everyone to live their lives free from prying eyes.
(Privacy does not have limitations shared – much less standardized – and in
the eyes of different people, or different cultures, can mean different things.)
10#13 .:. December 17, 2015

11. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
It is argued that privacy is now disappearing. For example, telecoms collect
data on where (in which cell) any caller’s and recipient’s cellphones are located
– even when phones have no call in progress –, and data on when, where,
how long, and between whom each and every call takes place are recorded.
This is among the consequences of the “digital revolution”.
It’s therefore not surprising that when a website uses cookies, it is requested
to warn visitors through a visible alert, and allow them to refuse cookies.
(If you forgot what cookies are, please refer to the presentation we used
during our meeting on December 15.)
Is Privacy Disappearing?
11#13 .:. December 17, 2015

12. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Websites which use cookies
are requested to tell visitors
that they do so, provide
details on the cookie policy
they adopt, and explicitly ask
visitors to accept cookies.
This is to avoid that some
sphere of privacy is
renounced inadvertently.
Cookie Consent
12#13 .:. December 17, 2015

13. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Apart from the case of cookies, visitors may allow to have their privacy
voluntarily violated when they judge that this is worthwhile.
For instance, when a person wants to buy something on line (a book, a flight,
an hotel room…), she/he voluntarily agrees to reveal her/his name and
financial details (credit card, bank account, PayPal identity…, passwords
included) because she/he reckons that such a risk may be taken, after all.
Pay attention, please. Writing an e-mail address in a form, e.g. to receive a
newsletter, does not violate any privacy per se, inasmuch as an e-mail
address doesn’t carry any personal details on the person who uses it.
Privacy Renounced
13#13 .:. December 17, 2015

14. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
From a customers’ point of view, privacy means that
1. if someone collects data on you, she/he must inform you that she/he keeps
those data, who’s legally in charge, and what data have been collected;
2. you must be assured that any data collected about you is certainly and
radically erased, if you ask so (with the obvious exceptions of data
collected by public services, like city councils or hospitals, and public
business data, like invoices);
3. webpages containing critical data (such as a bank accounts ID, sensible
data, or any serious passwords) should be encrypted.
Legal Responsibilities
14#13 .:. December 17, 2015

15. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
The concept behind encryption is quite simple – make the data unlegible for
everyone else except those specified.
This is done using cryptography – the study of sending “messages” in a secret
form so that only those authorized to receive the “message” be able to read it.
The easy part of encryption is applying a mathematical function to the
plaintext and converting it to an encrypted cipher.
The harder part is to ensure that the people who are supposed to decipher
this message can do so with ease, yet only those authorised are able to
decipher it.
Cryptography
15#13 .:. December 17, 2015

16. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
To be accurate, what financial institutions and commercial firms must
guarantee to their customers while encrypting their message is not simply
their privacy. It is rather called transactions’ security.
Encrypted webpages use a different transmission protocol. They use https
instead of http.
Security
16#13 .:. December 17, 2015

17. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Services & Places
The last questions in our inventory of needed
tourist services deal with geography, maps and
locations.
(For reference, please see our lecture held on
November 19.)
Does our evaluated website provide or link a
georeferenced cartography?
17#13 .:. December 17, 2015

18. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Linked Maps & Directions
Note that georeferenced cartography is
almost always linked, though Google Maps
or OpenStreetMaps look like being actual part
of their html pages.
Very few DMO websites run their own
countries’ georeferenced cartography, if any.
On the other hand, any web cartography that
is not georeferenced appears to be outdated
and practically useless, today.
18#13 .:. December 17, 2015
This section of the
Prague page is generated
from a Google server,
not from a Prague server

19. UniBg .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. 2015-2016 .:.Roberto Peretta
Location-Based Services
As for LBSs, a rule of thumb
to verify their availability is
to see whether any share
location alert appears on a
desktop navigation.
This option is no longer
common, however, due to
privacy reason.
Going mobile on the spot is
the only sure way to check…
19#13 .:. December 17, 2015