Tourism in Digital Era

Carmen Bănescu, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, Cristina Boboc, Simona Ghiță, Valentina Vasile, Institute of National Economy, Bucharest, Romania
2021 unpublished
In a society facing a real technological revolution, tourism sector could not stay away from modern technique. Tourism entered the digital era with favorable results on profitability, competitiveness, and sustainability. The tourism sector has grown due to digitalization. People had access to viewing unknown locations and thus, the need arose to know new places. Obviously, access to more information is restricted by several factors in the development of society. In this paper, the impact of
more » ... talization on tourism services is analyzed through panel data regression models, estimating the way in which the share of people who have planned their trips online depends on the level of economic development, education, and knowledge in using the Internet, on security and safety of ICT infrastructure. The data refer to 29 European countries, over a 9 year -time period (2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018). The fixed effects model proved to be the most efficient. At the same time, the existence of a significant country effect on the use of online tourist booking services was highlighted. Western European countries economically developed have a positive propensity for digitalization in tourism, while Eastern European countries, mainly former communist countries, with a lower level of economic development are less in favor of digitalization in tourism.
doi:10.24818/basiq/2021/07/016 fatcat:fnbofqst6jhypmekt7tnl25pt4