TIScover -- A generic platform for web-based tourism information systems (Q1606601)

The tourism industry is one of the most prominent application areas for electronic commerce. The unique characteristics of tourism products like information intensity and intangibility make them especially well-suited for electronic purchase. Existing web-based tourism information systems, however, are characterized by heterogeneous structures and presentation of content, resulting in uncomfortable information access and therefore complicating the comparability of different offers. This paper presents TIScover, a generic platform for web-based tourism information systems. TIScover is generic in the sense that it provides the basis for both the employment of the system for arbitrary destinations and the integration of different kinds of tourism information providers while preserving the individuality of their representation. At the same time, the customer is enabled to homogeneously perform all phases of an electronic commerce transaction. Especially the information phase, being of major importance in tourism, is supported by means of alternative ways of information access. Finally, in order to ensure performance and reliability of the system in view of huge amounts of data and high access rates, TIScover supports a hybrid approach for data management combining database technology and a concept for the materialization of web pages.