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Information Convergence in the Long Tail: The Case of Tourism Destination Information

  • Conference paper
Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2009

Abstract

Tourism information on the Internet is spreading through a wide range of different websites. In addition to the official destination or attraction websites, many are unofficial websites such as blogs, wiki, social networks, which offer destination information. Hence official websites, being destination or attraction sites, are challenged by unofficial ones. Actually these two different types of websites often diffuse similar content in terms of topics and subjects but in different forms. This study explores the information market around a given tourism destination and investigates the characteristics and quality of the available websites. It underlines the importance of consumer generated content and its strategic role for the promotion. Finally, several ways of exploiting the official and unofficial contents are explored and the topic of the possible information convergence, thanks to folksonomies, is discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. webatelier. net, University of Lugano, Switzerland

    Alessandro Inversini

  2. ICTHR, Bournemouth University, England

    Dimitrios Buhalis

Authors
  1. Alessandro Inversini
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  2. Dimitrios Buhalis
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Applied Sciences Ravensburg-Weingarten, Weingarten, Germany

    Wolfram Höpken

  2. Laboratory for Intelligent Systems in Tourism, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA

    Ulrike Gretzel

  3. School of Hotel & Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

    Rob Law

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Inversini, A., Buhalis, D. (2009). Information Convergence in the Long Tail: The Case of Tourism Destination Information. In: Höpken, W., Gretzel, U., Law, R. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2009. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-93971-0_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-211-93971-0_32

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Vienna

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-211-93970-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-211-93971-0

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