Developing an eTourism Platform for Accessible Tourism in Europe: Technical Challenges

Abstract

This paper identifies the technical challenges and requirements for building and operating a comprehensive eTourism platform for serving the disabled traveller market. The most critical technical challenges are illustrated, namely: Interoperability, Content Integration, Accessible Design and Personalisation. The ePortal requires synergies between eBusiness, eTourism, eGovernment and eCitizen services and demands a high degree of standardisation and interconnectivity. Stakeholders that address this market, including: tourism suppliers, Destination Management Organisations such as National- Regional- and Local Tourism Boards, e-intermediaries, portals and content providers, as well as disability related organisations, should ensure the full interoperability with the system and should work together towards creating a range of accessible tourism paths in their destinations. This e-service relies heavily on relevancy of content as well as accuracy and quality of information. As disabled people have restricted choices, due to the physical and informational accessibility barriers integrating content from a wide range of reliable sources will be critical. The aim is to integrate and syndicate information related to accessible tourism venues, which is currently scattered in a wide number of service providers available in different formats. The accessible design of the platform enables disabled users, utilising a variety of assistive technologies, to retrieve information in an efficient and effective manner and is also of paramount importance for both their ability to select the most appropriate service and also for their satisfaction. The service also provides augmented personalisation features by deploying user profiling techniques that encapsulate the particular user requirements of the disabled market. ICTs can not only assist disabled citizens to identify suitable tourism products but can also enable the personalisation of information retrieval and customisation of interfaces. OSSATE as a specialised eTourism portal needs to take into consideration the key priorities of the disabled market and the technical challenges that evolve in building a system to address the particular requirements of this market. To ensure success, the portal will require accessibility, auditing, e-tourism and e-business expertise that will enable the delivery of personalised database-driven, web-based and/or mobile telephony information and reservation services. The development of a flexible and fully interoperable technology platform that enables suppliers to “plug and play”, will allow the growth of the service and provide disabled consumers the ability to customise the way they retrieve and interact with information.