2. • eTourismBook facilitates the Local Tourism Service Providers to
offer a memorable and Authentic Holiday experience to the
discerning travelers. It caters to the tourists in the entire tourism
lifecycle – from PLANNING, BUDGETING to VALUE ADDING their
CHOICES and allowing them to SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES
after executing their plan.
• In the whole process eTourismbook tries to create deeper
engagements via learning through active participation and
knowledge sharing to enhance the tourism experience.
• The state of the art technologies of ubiquitous computing (mobile,
cloud, web convergence) are used to facilitate tourism information
discovery, tourism information update and connecting the
unconnected tourism ecosystem of service providers and users in a
seamless manner.
3. What is the Problem Being addressed?
Information on all
aspects of the tourism life
cycle not available at one
place
Travelers are moving
away from mass tourism
to independent travel and
demand authentic and
memorable experiences.
Internet makes the task
of Destination research
easier but the related
The Tourist Cycle
information is not easily
available and accessible.
4. What is the Problem Being
addressed?
– The fragmentation of the
tourism value chain
– Tourism Small &
Medium Enterprises are
not able to promote their
services to the tourists.
– Concept of Value add
has new definition but
the tourism ecosystem
has not fully woken to it
– The role and value of
Tour Operators has
The Tourism Value Chain
nearly vanished but
there is no substitute for
their BUNDLING TASK
5. What is needed?
• An integrated approach which looks at the tourism sector as a whole;
taking all the elements of its chain of value into consideration.
• There should be knowledge-driven improvement of the productivity
of businesses and destinations.
• The constituent elements must influence productivity either directly or
indirectly; they must move to a common platform where they can
interrelate around a system of networks (Network effect).
• Knowledge and its transfer must be the motor of the network,
which self-organises and self-develops on the basis of the contributions
of its members.
SOLUTION: eTourismbook – An Integrated Tourism Platform
6. The Product
• We plan to develop an integrated platform for
tourism learning and delivery – eTourismbook
• E denotes the electronic nature of the
information and knowledgebase
• Tourism – denotes the authentic tourism
offering, in terms of pre tour, at the attraction
and post tour for tourism destinations
• Book – denotes the Booking aspect of the
Tourism and related products and services
9. PLAN
Select Tour Type Get Maps Get Expert Advice Your Customized
and Destination and Directions & Destination Guide Tour Itinerary
10. ENGAGE
• Higher Value Engagement
• Participatory Tourism
• Learning Local Culture
• Engaging in Benefit to Locals
(Volunterurism)
• Local Experts engagement
12. The Team
• The project and product is the outcome of the personal frustration of the
team leader of the project to find solution to booking authentic tourism
experiences during her avid travel to many countries and cities in India.
• Dolly Bhasin formed a company 3 yrs back to address this issue and offer a
unique preposition by making the shortcoming as an opportunity.
• Despite having an established consulting practice and 25 years of
experience in ICT; she took a sabbatical and did a Masters in Tourism and
Travel from Univ. of Nottingham under a scholarship programme under two
scholarships – Mastercard and UoN.
• Her main objective to join this programme was to try and develop a solution
framework for the Tourism Challenge through an entrepreneurial approach.
13. The Team
• The broad criteria of the team selection was to get people from
different disciplines, specially a combination of technical and biz
side to get divergent point of views, the focus was also to bring
some members with experience and others completely raw
(students), but not all conditions were met. We had a relatively weak
technical team and no Financial person.
• The current team composition is as follows:
Dolly Bhasin – The Gang Leader – A Serial Entrepreneur
Sreenath Chinta – The solution architect – A Tech hand working in USA
Rajesh Nair – The Biz Developer- A consultant with a consulting firm
Apurve Gupta – Developer – Engineering Student
Fakher Oueslati– Developer – Engineering Student
Akanksha Angurala– Content Gathering – Engineering Student
18. MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING
• 60% of the population of
the world in developing
countries do not have
access to web
MOBILE CLOUD • Mobile penetration in
COMPUTING Developing world in
better
• Most information is in
text (English) format
while users are not all
English speaking or
literate.
SOLUTION: Mobile (Web) Cloud Computing
19. Addressing TECH Risks
• The Technical Challenges are being met
by aligning with Tech leaders in some
domains
– Google for Search and Maps, etc. (Discussed
and agreed)
– IBM for Cloud (Partnership signed)
– Knowledge Frameworks being explored (see
next slide)
– SEMANTIC Web (participating in W3C
forums)
20. Expected Improved Tourism Value chain
The key to creating value is co-produced offerings that mobilise customers,
and the only true source of competitive advantage is the ability to
conceive the entire value-creating system and make it work
Source: http://www.eduwilliam.com
21. Funding
• The Project has many Research and New Model
components, so very high R&D costs and
experimentation is involved
• We would try to raise venture funding quite early; as
there is substantial fund requirements.
• We are also exploring to bring in Partners from the
Tourism Industry who are specialists in the 5 target
markets which we have chosen to generate high
revenues, with lesser marketing efforts and Dollars.
• Suitable grants from Sustainable Tourism Development
and UN bodies will also be explored
• The project cannot be undertaken in absence of
reasonable funding and may have to be shelved, if
unable to raise necessary capital.
