Responding to the electronic marketplace: Lessons from destination management systems

Abstract

This paper examines the record of publicly funded Destination Management Systems and finds reasons to doubt the robustness of the concept. A profound scepticism might be all that was appropriate were it not for the clear progress in the distribution of hospitality products by proprietary and third party specialist systems, which nevertheless up to now have largely served the business community, and in the technical progress made by projects which bring into the range of the possible an electronic global market for tourism products. The paper therefore outlines the need for revisiting previous research and undertaking new work to determine the attitudes and the needs of both consumers (of all sorts) at the point of sale and vendors (both large and small) at the point of offer. Armed with this understanding, realistic scenarios of the electronic distribution of hospitality products can be developed.