eTourism platform survey : towards a standardized data schema for points of interest

Abstract

The tourism industry was one of the first sectors utilizing ICT.<br />A multitude of systems, standards and services developed. The use and the offered possibilities of the web enable continuous progress in the eTourism sector. eTourism defines the application of e-commerce solutions in the field of tourism. Since there is a great variety of stakeholders, the networking between them is highly important. To ensure interoperability between those business actors data standards are required. The multitude of different online providers in the tourism industry also leads to a multitude of different goals, policies, standards, etc. Especially standards are highly relevant, when it comes to integration of content from other providers into own applications.<br />The survey considers and investigates point of interest data as content.<br />Until now no data standard regarding points of interest has enforced, even though some formats are prevalent. The integration of external content can become complex, due to the missing data standard. Each data source has to be handled separately, what implies higher efforts in implementing networking processes. The missing standard is complicating the reusability, exchange and comparison of data in the tourism sector.<br />A restraint of innovation may be the consequence. The approach of the survey is based on the investigation of different online providers in the tourism industry in relation to point of interest data. Thereby, the available platforms are analyzed in regard to their APIs, data availability, trust and security issues, as well as their different policy guidelines for using their data as a third party service. The analytical results are summarized in a comparative matrix. Based on the analysis of online providers and the evaluation of current dominant formats a new data standard for points of interest is developed - PXF (Point of Interest eX-change Format). The applicability of the standard is verified via the prototypical implementation.