Projects > P.ICT.urism


PROJECT P.ICT.urism

(European Commission)


The overall aim of the proposal is to develop a platform that facilitates the aggregation and integration of small and medium-sized tourism service providers in destination countries with agents, tour operators and distributors in generating countries. It will do so through the creation of a common architecture of business processes and data exchange models. In today's highly segmented tourism market, such architecture will increase the ability of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) to respond to the growing trend towards individual travel and dynamic packaging.

The market is currently served by technology providers wanting to sell their "off-the-peg products” to SMEs, irrespective of these businesses' real needs. Having invested in building such ‘centralized’ technologies, the providers' main concern is to pay off their investments.

The challenge of this project is to create a bottom-up approach which will involve SMEs directly in the creation of a tailor-made technology that responds to their actual needs and enhances their business opportunities. To achieve this, all the proposed technology will be based on an open-source model whose source code is freely available, granting users the right to use, change and improve the model's design.

Objectives:
  • To create architecture of business processes and data exchange models which is fully interoperable across Europe (irrespective of national borders) and facilitates the distribution and marketing of local tourism services
  • To demonstrate the feasibility of the architecture through three pilot projects.  These will involve companies offering tourism services in three specific destinations and companies in different source markets looking for tourism offers.
  • To promote the adoption of the business architecture through full involvement of the industry and targeted promotional campaigns.

Partners:

Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Instituto Tecnologico Hotelero (ITH) -with CICtourGUNE and Tecnalia Research & Innovation-, ECTAA, HOTREC and ZN.