Beyond Traditional Tourism Information Systems: The Web-Based Approach TIScover

The Internet is more and more emerging as a perfect platform to bring tourism information and products to the customer in a direct way. However, web-based tourism information systems are required not to offer online brochures only, but rather to provide both, value and service. One system which has recognized this fact is TIScover. TIScover mainly focuses on three crucial aspects: first, by using database technology in combination with a decentralized maintenance approach on the basis of an Extranet a high quality content in terms of comprehensiveness, accurateness and actuality can be achieved. Second, by supporting different information retrieval philosophies ranging from pure navigation, to structured search and full-text search capabilities along with online booking facility convenient and powerful access to tourism information and products is possible. And third, different dimensions of customizability allow the system to be employed not only for different kinds of tourism information providers, but also for different regions and even different countries to individually represent complex and heterogeneous tourism information and products. This paper discusses the design goals followed by TIScover, outlines the concepts used for realizing them and gives an insight into some lessons learned along TIScover’s realization and utilization phase.