E-tourism good for economic development

Lazarus Sauti

For Africa to be a truly successful destination of choice, tourism product owners and providers need to engage potential customers and meet their needs and wants in a way that exceeds expectations.

To meet these needs, they should embrace information and communication technology (ICT) since it has the great advantage in that it allows players in the tourism industry to replace expensive human labour with technological labour.

Since many tourists worldwide have regular access to the internet, stakeholders in the tourism fraternity should invest in e-tourism.

E-tourism is the digitisation of all the processes and value chains in the tourism, hospitality, travel and catering industries that enable organisations to maximise their effectiveness and efficiency.

The goal should be to compute leisure and tourist plans users, taking into account their preferences and the information of the context where the visit will take place.

Africa is full of natural wonders but what is lacking is the platform to market the continent and her natural wonders to the rest of the world in an effective manner.

Embracing e-tourism is therefore one way that can raise the profile of Africa as a great continent.

Majbritt Magnussen, initiator of the Views in Tourism Project, believes that e-tourism is an important platform “to develop a sustainable and equitable online tourism sector in Africa since it takes advantage of extranets for developing transactions with trusted partners, intranets for reorganising internal processes and the internet for the interacting with all its stakeholders.”

Significantly, e-tourism integrates two economic driving forces – ICTs and tourism – and can enhance tourism growth and the empowerment of local stakeholders.

This means countries within and across the great African continent should use platforms offered by ICT for branding, knowledge management and promotion of responsible tourism.

Furthermore, stakeholders in the tourism industry in Africa should invest in social networking, blogging and consumer generated media trends that have become vital tools in the promotion of travel.

Another important avenue is to bring tourism players together to be educated, informed and inspired at e-tourism specific conferences and international intermediaries.

By bringing together key players, Africa can create a shift in continental business cultures and practices and at the same time encouraging strategic investment in tourism.

The whole idea should be to educate and inform the public and private tourism sectors in African countries and to raise awareness of the importance of ICT in adapting to the rapidly changing travel distribution channels in order to avoid the creation of a digital divide between Africa and the global travel trade.

Governments in Africa must create, without fail, conducive environments to allow tourism players to operate freely – without hassles.

This means they should strategies and craft policies that enhance the expansion of the tourism industry in the continent.

More so, African governments should invest in infrastructure.

Without supporting infrastructure, the tourism sector in the continent will never realise its full potential.

Frankly, technology touches on every sector in every country.

Therefore, African countries must embrace technology if the continent wants to be smart enough to use the benefits of technology such as convenience, speed, and accuracy and avoid some of the pitfalls, lack of human contact, user friendliness, size of lettering, and lack of human contact.