Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Tourism clearly counts as one of the social and economic
phenomena of the last century. According to WTO, the number of international
tourists traveling in the world reached 698 millions in 2000. International
tourism receipts for the same year have been estimated at US$ 476 billion.
Today, Tourism is perceived as an eminently global industry with a worldwide
network of producers, suppliers and intermediaries. This industry is also
characterized by its fragmentation and heterogeneity, thus a complex product
with different components. Moreover, Tourism is information intensive industry,
with worldwide heterogeneous consumers communities with constant changing
needs.
Recognizing the benefits of tourism, many countries have created
coordinating agencies at national level, to address tourism related services.
Often, these agencies, such as Tourist Boards tend to be state organizations in
charge of marketing their country as a «brand». Historically, Tourist
Boards have marketed their destinations by communicating their countries'
tourism offer to the international markets through various media, including
direct contact with the consumers through physical offices in the world's major
cities. They also
promote their destinations by distributing printed and video
materials and taking part in tourism trade shows or «similar live
activities». However, in recent years, tremendous changes that have
occurred in the travel industry have driven Tourist Boards all over the world
to adapt their missions, and sharpen their marketing strategies. Probably, the
single most significant change driving this redefinition of corporate mission
is the revolutions in information technology. Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) available today make it possible to radically reengineer
activities between an organization, its customers, suppliers and
stakeholders.
The role of such national institutions in creating a general
enabling environment for the tourism industry is crucial especially for
developing countries. Morocco is one of those developing countries that are
relying on Tourism to jumpstart a tourism driven economy. The State owned
Tourism Board for Morocco, called the Moroccan National Tourism Office (MNTO),
is naturally also confronted with those changes and that is a strong
reinforcing factor to its obligation to become the leveraging instrument of
Morocco Destination's global image and tourism product positioning in
international consumers' mind. Therefore, MNTO should reevaluate its approach
towards marketing Morocco as a destination to tourists worldwide.
The purpose of this project is to evaluate the technical,
managerial and organizational feasibility of a destination marketing system for
the Moroccan
National Tourism Office. The project is organized as follows:
Section 1 contains an overview of the world tourism travel; Section 2 reviews
the tourism industry characteristics and business constraints; Section 3
introduce the strategic implications of Information Technology on the tourism
industry; Section 4 describe today's Internet travel; Section 5 introduce to
Destination Management System and highlights its success criteria; Section 6
propose the Destination Management System conception and implementation for the
MNTO.
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