E-TOURISM FOR YOUTH IN SICHUAN
...ation is provided on the definition of E-Tourism and the past and current situation of E-tourism in China, especially in Sichuan, outlines the motivation behind the project and objectives of the research project, and presents the structure of the overall dissertation. Chapter II: The researcher reviews the literature in order to develop a brief understanding of E-Tourism. It includes the technology and economic effect on development of E-tourism. Chapter III: The researcher reviews the methodology of this study considering alternative methodologies, sources of data, data collection methods, reason of using any questions in questionnaire. Chapter IV: The researcher reports the current situation of Sichuan’s E-Tourism for youth and the findings of the survey and interview can be found in this section. And discuss results in relation to literature. Chapter V: The writer makes some suggestions to the balance of past, present and future application of E-Tourism in Sichuan for youth based on the findings, includes the conclusion, limitations and problems confronted and personal learning. CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Introduction In this chapter, to identify the objective of this research, the researcher will focus on reviewing the previous literature. Before reviewing the current literature in area of E-tourism, the definition of E-tourism is necessary to be exactly explained. After that, an overview of previous study on E-tourism will be provided, which includes the development of E-tourism in recent years and its opportunities and challenges in the future. Moreover, both the benefits and barriers of E-tourism also will be mentioned in the previous study. Finally, the current situation of E-tourism in China, and a little research about Sichuan province will be analyzed to support this research. 2.2 Definition E-commerce is defined as the process of buying and selling or exchanging services and information via computer networks including the Internet (Turban, Lee, King and Chung, 2000). Kim (2004) expressed a similar view that E-tourism is based on internet, and combines e-bank and travel information. For tourism businesses, the Internet offers the potential to make information and booking services available to large numbers of tourists at comparatively low costs. It also provides a tool for communication between tourism suppliers, intermediaries, as well as end-consumers. Akoh (2001), an expert of e-business in Ethiopia, pointed out that tourism is information-intensive, so E-tourism is expected to play a large role; furthermore, the tourism industry involves stakeholders from the government, tour operators, hotels, airlines and other transport consumers. 2.3. Previous study on E-tourism For the purpose of examining how E-tourism work in Sichuan travelling market, the previous study in this field should be reviewed. 2.3.1. Benefits and obstacles in E-tourism Most researches has expressed a similar view that government plays a very important role in driving the use of electronic commerce for the tourism industry and help E-tourism to increase their abilities to compete by building awareness and training programs in this field. In an article study by Kim (2004), a professor from College of Hotel & Tourism Management in Kyunghee University, he has drawn attention to the fact that government in partnership with the private travel agency should build up a more comprehensive and consistent policy to the tourism industry and electronic commerce; in addition some evolution method also should be applied to assess their actions. In Kim’s research indicates that respondents considered that the main benefits of e-commerce for tourism enterprises are ‘providing easy access to information on tourism services,’ ‘providing better information on tourism services,’ and ‘providing convenience for customers’. This result implies that respondents are less aware of many other benefits of e-commerce, such as ‘creating new markets,’ ‘improving customer services,’ ‘establishing interactive relationships with customers’, ‘reducing operating cost’, ‘interacting with other business partners’, and ‘founding new business partners’(See Figure 2.1). Figure 2.1 Benefits of E-Tourism (From Kim, 2004: P3) On the other hand, there are also a number of obstacles for E-tourism, which includes ‘limited knowledge of available technology,’ ‘lack of awareness,’ and so on (Kim, 2004: p4). The two main factors for conducting successful e-commerce are ‘security of the e-commerce system’ and ‘user-friendly Web interface’, so it is very significant for government and travel agency to build trust and convenience for customers (Briggs, 2001). According to survey done in 2004 from Gartner and analysis from IDG News Service, more and more people didn’t satisfy the Internet security in the online transaction. About 60% informants concerned the problem of internet security. Over 80% people believed the experts should provide more security protection measures, not only limit the accounts and passwords, then, they would like to use online transaction with them (Li, 2004). 2.3.2. The attitude of Americans towards E-tourism According to the report of American tourism market, which surveyed 1351 and 1200 business travellers on April 30, 2002, about 90% of Americans have access to the Internet search information on E-tourism web sites. And the E-tourism travel websites is preferred to traditional travel agency. There are two main reasons why more and more people in America like to choose E-tourism web sites. First, according to this study, nearly 66% users believe that E-tourism web sites provide better services than traditional travel agency., 39% of leisure American travellers (whether they use the Internet or not) think that the Internet is easier and faster to use for travel planning than a travel agent. Second, travellers can get the best online price of hotel; moreover they can also be provided an extra 10% discount on some websites (Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown, .2002). 2.3.3. The current attitude and situation of E-tourism in China and Sichuan With the development of information technology in China, e-commence has had a rapid development in tourism as a trade way and business mode. According to the research from Data Monitor Company, the volume of online transaction of E-tourism is account for 35% of online transaction in the world (Chen, Hou and Wang, 2004). A fine E-tourism company is not only a good online travel website. It usually requires office automation in the company, including finance management, information query. Therefore, the authors believed the development situation in China have least 10 years distance to compare some developed countries (Deng, Guan & Wei, 2004). Because they thought E-tourism has some serious problems in China as follow: Computer hardware falls behind; network equipment is not enough; travel information also fall behind; many information resources are not share. Currently, a well designed system, such as Tourism Management Information System, Tourism Geographic Information System, is not built. Almost E-tourism companies only have the Electronic Data Processing System (Wang, 2000). Meanwhile, Huang Hong (2002) point that only 8% people thought the online services and products are depicted in detail. Another study provided by Chinese travel council, among the whole tourist population in China, 53.16% tourists are young people whose ages are below 30, and most of them have higher education and show great acceptance and positive attitudes toward the development of E-tourism (Shu, Ling, 2004). It seems that there is a huge potential E-tourism market for young people. In Sichuan, the Jiuzaigou Network Travel CO., LTD got 100 million RMB in income through internet transaction just in one year. All travel agencies could book tickets on internet travel to Jiuzaigou valley. Mr. Cui, the director of Sichuan Travel Bureau, said that it is built up sale system on internet in all interesting place in Sichuan (Zhen, 2003). 2.4. Conclusion With the Chinese government’s encouragement to develop E-tourism, some research noticed that the sustainability of the development of E-tourism depended on tourists’ attitudes as well as the government policy. Other work argued that in addition to the tourists’ attitudes and government’ policy, the quality of E-tourism service also plays a very important role in continuing the development of E-tourism in Sichuan. In order to understand better tourists’ attitudes in Sichuan travelling market, the present study was conducted at two medium size travel agencies in Chengdu. The research methodology employed in the research process will be discussed in the next chapter. CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY 3.1 Introduction The objectives of the research were to identify the situation and attitudes of youth towards E-tourism in Sichuan, meanwhile identify the advantages and disadvantages of the E-tourism. In order to meet the objectives effectively, the research was conducted in two typical E-Tourism companies: Sichuan China Youth Travel Agency ( one of most famous travel agency in China) and Chengdu Shenzhou International Travel Agency ( a classic example of E-Tourism enterprise,). It is necessary to develop an investigation in Sichuan province in order to understand the current conditions of E-tourism in Sichuan and to test the situation of youth using E-tourism. 3.2 Research Approach The methodology employed in this paper mainly is based on the qualitative and inductive approach, because this study was attempted to identify the attitudes of young people toward E-Tourism. At the same time, the quantitative approach is also chose to find out the approximate proportion of young people who used E-Tourism services in Sichuan. The methods used in this study including a survey and semi-structured interview. In order to understand the basic information about the current situation of E-Tourism, the author interviewed 2 managers from two different E-Tourism companies. Moreover, the interview adopted the semi-structure to better explore the interviewees’ response more deeply and widely (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2002a). 3.3 Research Methods 3.3.1 Questionnaire As to the questionnaire, random sampling was used, because the research subject was total youth population, the result was likely accurate using this kind of sample (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2002b). All participants are youths choosing in the Internet bars and in the universities. The questionnaire was designed to assess whether or not the respondents ever used E-Tourism services, and then to identify what services of E-Tourism would attract them; furthermore, to evaluate their attitudes toward E-Tourism. At last, the advantages and disadvantages of E-Tourism were found out according to these responses. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of questions concerning their demographics, including gender and ages. The second part explored the youths’ attitudes toward the travel and E-tourism. For example, the first question is “What’s the condition about your travel?” to identify some relationship between their condition and attitudes toward the E-tourism services. In additional, this part also found out the main streams of obtaining travel information. The last part focused on the specific information about situation of youth using the E-tourism services. At the same time, the five-point Likert-type scale was used in questionnaire to rank their attitudes towards those services. Some questions also designed to identify the problems which would prevent youth from choosing E-Tourism services. In this dissertation, 60 questionnaires were sent out and 50 returned to find out the youth’s travel situation and their attitudes toward the E-tourism. All questionnaires were directly distributed to respondents in Internet bar and university students. 3.3.2 Interview The interview includes three types: structured interview, semi-structured interview and unstructured interview (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2002c). The main forms of interviews are conducted by face-to-face, telephone and groups interviews are the main form interviews. Face-to-face interviews were used so that the author could directly get the right information. Compared with other survey designs, interviews is a good way to collect valid and reliable data that close to research questions and objectives (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2002d). In this dissertation, the interview was designed to collect the information from the managers in Sichuan China Youth Travel Agency and Chengdu Shenzhou International Travel Agency which had their own online websites. Both of them were quite famous travel agencies in Sichuan. Therefore, it was comparatively easier to collect data and get effective information back. 3.4 Limitations Although the questionnaire was designed strictly and conducted carefully, some unavoidable limitations were also involved in this research and influenced the result to some extent. Firstly, because all the response of questionnaires came from participants’ personal opinion, the results may also be affected by unfairness. In a word, if the participants gave the incorrect answer, the validity in this research would be badly affected. Secondly, although the samples choose randomly, most of them were university students; in addition, due to the time and cost limitation, the range of location investigated was so limited (all respondents chose in Chengdu) that the result were influenced by local factors. Therefore, this sample may not stand for all youth, and of the reliability of the research would be influenced. At last, the accurate of the research is based on the scale. While the sample in this research was comparatively small, so the result also will be affected. As to the limitations of interview, a major limitation of interview is that interview lack a standardisation, the reliability therefore is concerned with different researchers (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002; Healey and Rawlinson, 1994). In this work, although the semi-structured interview was employed, it also appeared some problems because the interviewees’ understanding toward the research objectives. CHAPTER IV FINDING AND DISCUSSIONS 4.1 Introduction The findings, which obtained from the interviews and questionnaires, will be explained in this chapter. The main objective of this research was to analyze and evaluate the situation and attitude of youth for E-Tourism. Therefore, recent data from this research will be discussed and compared with previous study. 4.2 Findings from interview 4.2.1 Information of managers Two managers were interviewed: Mr. Hu from Chengdu Shenzhou International Travel Agency and Mr. Li from Sichuan China Youth Travel Agency. Through this interview, the number of times of people visited the travel online website was explored. In Shenzhou International Travel Agency’s website, the number of times was about 350 per day; while in Sichuan China Youth Travel Agency were only 100 every day. As a very famous and old travel agency, Sichuan China Youth Travel Agency understood the importance of E-Tourism services. However, the company still emphasized the development of traditional way and paid little attention to the development of online travel services; as a result, web visitors have difficulty finding specific information on its website. Mr. Li said that his enterprise thought the E-Tourism could not develop well in near future because of many current barriers. In contrast, Mr. Hu assumed that developing E-Tourism in his company was a good way to attract customers, because many guests would rather choose a famous travel agency than a small one using traditional way. In this background, their online travel net provided guest various services and amount of information. According to the conversation with Mr. Hu, he believed the benefits of E-Tourism as follow: A: Provide convenience for customers getting travel information B: Provide more comprehensive travel information C: Save time and money both travel agencies and customers D: improve the travel agency’s public influence and recognition, especially for the small & medium sized travel agency At the same time, Mr. Hu also pointed out that the big problem for their E-Tourism services was that some people copied their travel information and used in other online travel net. He thought that this behaviour invaded intellectual property rights in E-Tourism, so the current urgent thing was to solve this problem which prevented the development of E-Tourism. Mr. Li presented the similar opinions about benefits of E-Tourism. Additionally, he also expressed the obstacles of E-Tourism as follow: A: Limited knowledge of modern technology B: Limited cost and technology hardly to complete the full information system both online net and inside of company (integrating e-commerce & existing system) C: Limited knowledge to secure the online transaction D: Lack of guest’s trust toward online information At last, he emphasized that their agency was accustomed to the traditional tourism, while the E-Tourism was a big challenge and also full of risks. Therefore, most of managers and staffs in his agency took the passive way to avoid the change. As a result, his travel agency could not get much development in E-Tourism. 4.2.2 Discussions and findings from the interview According to information from China Travel Business Net in 2003, Jiuzaigou Valley Network Travel CO., LTD already got 100 million RMB in income (Zhen, 2003). Mr. Hu also presented the similar opinion that online transaction brought a rapid development for his company. However, Mr. Li believed that traditional business way is China Youth Travel Agency’s main method to get income currently. Next, Kim(2004) stated that the main benefits of e-commerce for tourism enterprises were ‘providing easy access to information on tourism services’, ‘providing better information on tourism services,’ ‘providing convenience for customers’, ‘creating new markets,’ ‘improving customer services,’ ‘establishing interactive relationships with customers’, ‘reducing operating cost’, ‘interacting with other business partners’, and ‘founding new business partners’. So compared with these theories, the finding from interview just explained four main benefits of E-Tourism while did not mention all above information. Finally, In Kim’s (2004) study, three main obstacles were “Limited knowledge of available technology”, “Lack of awareness of e-commerce” and “Cost of initial investment”. However, the result seem inconsistent with Kim’s hypotheses, Mr. Li believed that “Lack of guest’s trust toward online information” is a big problem to prevent the development of E-Tourism; moreover, Mr. Hu gave the reason why guest have difficultly trust online information might be that many people plagiarized their information. 4.3 Findings from questionnaire 4.3.1 Information of respondents In this research, 68% of total respondents were male, whereas the percent of female accounted for 32% of total. All the respondents were young and their average age was 20.84 years old. The range of age was 18-27. (See Table 4.1) Table 4.1: the situation about age and gender of respondents Gender Age Mean N Minimum Maximum % of Total N Male 21.15 34 18 27 68.0% Female 20.19 16 18 26 32.0% Total 20.84 50 18 27 100.0% Generally speaking, to some extent, this sample was reasonable and could rightly reflect the situation and attitude of youth for E-Tourism. Figure 4.1 illustrated the respondents’ travel condition. The percent of youths who wanted to choose travelling place by themselves (including with friends) accounted for 36%, which was the maximum percent in the figure. The second biggest one was 28%, who liked travelling with their parents. It showed that about 64% of respondents had travel experience, while 36% of respondents had no travel experience; it implied the travel market of youth is needed to develop. Figure 4.1: Respondents’ condition of travel Figure 4.2: Respondents’ main streams of getting travel information Figure 4.2 demonstrated that 42% of respondents’ obtained travel information from friends and parents. Respondents who got travel information from outdoor advertisement account for 22%. In contrast, only 12% got information from internet. Based on the finding in figure 4.3, 78% of respondents considered that they were interested in E-Tourism, which was a new thing for youth and could attract their attention. Figure 4.3: Respondents’ Opinions of Interest towards E-Tourism However, compared with the high percent of interest toward E-Tourism, only 18% of respondents had the experience to visit the online travel net. (See figure 4.4) Figure 4.4: Respondents’ Experience of the Online Travel Net Considering the relationship between gender and the condition about using E-Tourism, according to information from figure 4.5, the percent of male who ever visited the online travel net is higher than the percent of female. Figure 4.5: Respondents’ experience of the online travel net depending gender Figure 4.6: Respondents’ experience of the online travel net depending travel condition At the same time, the people who visited the online travel net mostly had the independent travel experiences. The respondents who had one travel plan and visited online travel net also occupied near a quarter of total people who had ever visited online travel net. (See figure 4.6) Based on information from those respondents, who visited online travel net, all participants had used the service of online travel information, 18.2% of respondents used online travel map, only 6.7% booked tickets through online net. Furthermore, no respondent booked hotels or other accommodation. (See Table 4.2) Table 4.2: The services used of respondents who visited online travel net Responses Percent of Cases N Percent Services Online travel information 11 73.3% 100.0% Online booking ticks 1 6.7% 9.1% Booking hotels and other accommodation 0 0% ---- Travel map 2 13.3% 18.2% Other 1 6.7% 9.1% Total 15 100.0% 136.4% Table 4.3 shows the respondents’ opinions towards various E-Tourism services (5= very important, 4= important, 3= useful, 2= no idea, 1= not useful). Respondents thought that the E-Tourism should provide full and true information and the average mark was 4.56. It implied that most of them worried the degree of true information on websites. At the same time, they paid much attention to discount information, which got the mark 3.62. Table 4.3: Respondents’ opinions towards various E-Tourism services N Mean Full and true information 50 4.56 Discount information 50 3.62 Secure and convenient payment 50 3.16 Interesting and cheap travel routes 50 3.12 Detailed map about interest place 50 3.02 Valid N (listwise) 50 Regarding the question related to which problems preventing youths use E-Tourism services, 70% of respondents did not know E-Tourism so that they had never used E-Tourism services. Additionally, 50% of interviewees can not trust online information, especially online payment. Also, 26% of youths believed that the lack of credit cards, used to pay online, prevented them to further use more E-Tourism services. (See Table 4.4) Table 4.4: Respondents’ problems using E-Tourism Responses Percent of Cases N Percent $problems No money 2 2.3% 4.0% Can't use internet 5 5.8% 10.0% Don't know E-Tourism 35 40.7% 70.0% Haven't credit card 13 15.1% 26.0% Can't trust 25 29.1% 50.0% Don't know how to use 3 3.5% 6.0% Other 3 3.5% 6.0% Total 86 100.0% 172.0% 4.3.2 Discussions the findings from questionnaires After analyzing the result of questionnaires, 78% of respondents showed interests toward E-Tourism; however, 82% did not use any E-Tourism services because of lack of awareness of E-Tourism. Kim (2004) pointed that nearly 60% people lack of awareness of E-Tourism. In this research, the percent of respondents who need to know what E-Tourism arrived 70%. According to analysis of information from questionnaire, more male youths had the experience to use the E-Tourism than female. The possible reason might be that male had more chances to touch with computer and internet. Additionally, most of respondents who visited online travel net had the independent travel experience. While the two main ways of getting travels information came from outdoor advertisement and friends, few people got information from Internet. Therefore, if E-Tourism enterprises want to develop better, they need to consider the above factors. After all, Mr. Li said that the traditional way was main method to get income for travel agency currently is right to some extent. Besides, Mr. Huang (2002) pointed out that only 8% people believed the services and products are depicted in detail. Similarly, respondents thought that “E-Tourism Company providing the full and true information” was very important. 4.4 Conclusion This chapter discussed and analyzed the situation and attitudes of youth toward E-Tourism. Just as mentioned in chapter 3, there were also some limitations in this dissertation. Therefore, the conclusions and recommendations of this research will be introduced in the next chapter. Chapter V Conclusion and recommendations 5.1 Introduction In this research, a vast majority of respondents were interested in travelling and even most of them had travel experience or desire. Therefore, the data and findings were valid and could strongly explain the main objectives of this research that the situation of youth using E-Tourism is still in early stage in Sichuan. Meanwhile, quite a few of young people presented their interest towards E-Tourism, as a new thing. In addition, advantages and disadvantages of E-Tourism in Sichuan have also been revealed. 5.2 Conclusions Although a great part of youth (78%) are interested in E-Tourism services, above 80% of youths didn’t use any E-Tourism services. The main reasons of the gap between the attitude and situation were limited awareness of E-Tourism and lack of trust towards information on internet. Meanwhile, a larger percent of youth using E-Tourism services only visited web to get travel information because of worry of security and convenience of payment. Limitation of widely acceptable online payment method prevented the further development of E-Tourism in Sichuan. Moreover, information from the interviews also was confirmed above results. Those managers of E-Tourism supported four main problems of E-Tourism. Besides forenamed three barriers, how to integrate e-commerce and existing system and build new and complete E-Tourism system was also a serious problem for E-Tourism enterprises. The four main problems are co-related but isolated points. For example, the possibility about stealing of travel information on internet affected the trustiness of E-Tourism corporations. The lack of trust further influenced the degree of worry about security and possibility led to the few people using E-Tourism. At the same time, the degree of awareness of E-Tourism for youth was still limited because of few people using E-Tourism services. How to let customers feel comfortable should b...