Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Prepared and Submitted by: Sucheta Amin (M-11-02) Sneha Sawant (M-11-51) Roshni Nambiar (M-11-34) Shardul Ramteke (M-11-) Vicky Razdan (M-11-)

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Introduction
The developments in computer and communication technologies have made it possible to have rental cars with computerised driving directions and self-service video-terminals at rental counters in high traffic airports. Fully automated rental transaction systems came into existence. Yet another major contribution of technological developments in computers and communication systems to tourism is the computerised reservation systems (CRS). These systems can now inform subscribers about schedules, fares and seat availability, issue tickets and boarding passes, record bookings, maintain waiting lists, display preferred airlines or classes, search for the lowest fare available or the first available non-stop flight and calculate fares for domestic and international itineraries. The system can also make reservations for other services like hotels, car rentals, cruises, railways, tours, boat charters, theatres and sporting events. According to WTO, the Internet is revolutionising the distribution of tourism information and sales. An increasing proportion of Internet users are buying online and tourism will gain a larger and larger share of the online commerce market. Obviously, the Internet is having a major impact as a source of information for tourism. Information Needs in Tourism Travel is a basic human instinct. Technological revolutions in the last few decades and the consequent changes in the social systems accelerated its intensity in the current century. Thus, tourism is presently a mass phenomenon involving every human being in the world. They need detailed information about each place they intend to visit. The specific elements of such information needs are:

Geographical information on location, climate, landscape, etc. Attraction features Social customs, culture and other special features of the place Accessibility though air, water, rail and road and availability of scheduled means of transport Accommodation, restaurant and shopping facilities Activities and entertainment facilities Seasons of visit and other unique features Quality of facilities and their standard prices including exchange rates Entry and exit formalities and restrictions if any on tourists, etc.

Though the ultimate users of this information are the consumers ie. the tourists, the actual benefits in money terms accrue to the tourism industry consisting of the destination managers and service providers. For tourism businesses, the Internet offers the potential to make information and booking facilities available to large numbers of tourists at relatively low costs. It also provides a tool for communication between tourism suppliers, intermediaries, as well as end-consumers.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

There is, therefore, a strong competition amongst various destination countries in the world to produce and package such information in the most attractive format to attract the consumers from the tourist generating countries. The travel intermediaries like travel agents, tour operators, and reservation system store such information in respect of each destination to service their clients and improve their business. They need the information in the easiest retrieval format so that the information needs of the clients are met as quickly as possible. Tourists generally need both static and dynamic information. Information on those features which do not change rapidly over time is termed as static information. It includes details information about location, climate, attraction features, history, facilities available, etc. Information about airline, train and bus schedules, tariffs of transport and accommodation units and current availability of such facilities is considered as dynamic as they can change very frequently. These items of information have to be gathered, stored and disseminated on a real time basis. All types of reservation systems including air, rail and accommodation sectors contain such information. Application of Information Technologies Till a few years ago, the basic sources of information in the tourism sector were pamphlets, brochures, directories, guide books, etc. produced and published by different countries. These sources prevail even today, though they are the most inefficient means of information. The last few decades witnessed the application of computer and communication technologies in the field of tourism. Two distinct streams of information sources viz, (i) online and (ii) offline came into existence. Databases containing information about places, tourist attractions and facilities became available for online access in several countries. The emergence of computerised reservations system (CRS) opened up a new source of online information on tourism and are being expanded continuously. The latest sources of online information is INTERNET which contains some pages on most of the tourist destinations in the world. Further hotel management and catering technology is fast emerging as an area of information technology application in the field of tourism. Electronic Commerce (EC) is an emerging area where business transactions take place via telecommunications networks, especially the Internet. Electronic commerce describes the process of buying and selling or exchanging of products, services, and information via computer networks including the Internet. The Internet has emerged as a major, perhaps eventually the major, worldwide distribution channel for goods, services, managerial and professional jobs. Travel and tourism are illustrating how e-commerce can change the structure of an industryand in the process create new business opportunities, especially in the B2B2C arena. The tourism e-market structure, just a B2B2C application, is actually a tourist information network linking all market participants and reflecting the economic relationships between them; tourism e-commerce process is only the process of suppliers plus tourist life cycle, deeply leading to distributed B2B2C application.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Intermediation
One thing that does become clear in looking at different cases in eBusiness is that there are different approaches to changing the value chain, and it does not always become shorter. In some cases, it has been desirable to remove one or more links in the value chain. To take a simple example, a business that had previously sold to retailers via distributors could take a decision to sell direct electronically, an approach known as Disintermediation. Part of the rationale is that by shortening the Value Chain, there may be benefits in reduced costs or a more responsive and efficient service. Seemingly paradoxically, eBusiness has also allowed the apparent opposite of Disintermediation in which a new step or steps are introduced to the value chain as new players find fresh ways to add value to the process. This is known as Reintermediation and examples here include shopping portals and electronic insurance brokers. Cybermediation refers to the creation of new kinds of intermediaries that simply could not have existed prior to the advent of eBusiness and the Internet, in categories including Searching, Price Discovery, Logistics, Settlement and Trust. Some on-line businesses find they need to control much of the value chain in order for their proposition to function correctly.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Computer Reservation System

A Computer Reservation System is a computerized system for saving and retrieving information when needed related to air travel. CRS were created and used by airlines and at a later point they were finally used in tourism intermediaries like travel agencies. What is CRS and GDS? There have been 3 stages of evolution the first reservation system was called an Airline Reservation system, the second a Computer Reservation System (CRS) and the third evolution is todays Global Distribution System (GDS). CRS and GDS seem to have the same functions but the major difference between these two systems is that CRS only provide information about airlines whereas by using GDS you can reserve a ticket, a room in a hotel and also a rental car. This is why they are called Global Distribution Systems because you can use GDS to reserve basically everything. CRS bundle information about prices, availabilities and reservation possibilities of package tours, flights, hotels, rented cars, ferries, cruises, courses, penalties and other products in large computing centres. Technically by the binding of the computing centre of the CRS to many different service providers (tour operators/airline among other things) one realizes, over which the respective inquiries of the travel agencies are continued to lead directly to the different offerers. The CRS takes over besides the account of the costs as well as if necessary also the disbursement of Incentives, resulting with a reservation, thus remuneration of the service providers for the travel agencies. The CRS supplies in addition, and offers auxiliary products to evaluations for the Back office systems of the travel agencies for the support of sales. Most tourism firms process their reservations through a computerised database called Computer Reservation System (CRS), which handles details of inventory, schedules and prices among other details. CRSs run on mainframes, minicomputers or microcomputers and are usually connected through data communication links to terminals within various branches of the company. CRSs are not to be confused with global distribution systems, but are often electronically connected to them for bookings. Computer reservation systems are primarily used for inventory management by airlines, hotels, and other tourism and hospitality enterprises. Enhanced and sophisticated CRS configurations and functionality offer companies an integrated solution for several processes including managing sales, bookings, customer relationship management and service, other marketing practices, yield management, payments and accounting even at a one-to-one customer basis. Integrated CRSs aim to organize companies internally by enabling organizational reengineering/ restructuring changes that in turn streamline processes and foster functional efficiency and effectiveness. Moreover, the term central reservation system refers to the CRS developed by hotel chains for centralizing the reservation process of all their affiliated properties and enabling multichain management. The major benefits of such systems are operational efficiencies and staff reductions.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Briefly outlined processes, functionalities, and benefits of a CRS as follows: * Flexible inventory booking capability * Immediate availability update * Overbooking management * Complete and detail reservations screen * Individual and group reservations and blockings * Travel agency information entry, activity reports and commission handling * Guest information enquiry * Reservations linked to city ledger * Advance deposit posting and auditing * Request for deposit and deposit received * Modifications and cancellation confirmations * Free-form comments field on all reservations * System generated confirmation numbers on all reservations * User identification * Confirmations printed automatically or on demand * Forecast reports * Current and future dates to five years historical information * Detailed inventory control * No-shows reports and handling (charging and billing) * Customer information past, present, future retained in system. The primary reason for using computers in the handling of reservations is to increase yield metrics, but this entirely depends on the level of systems integration. This is because CRS not only help tremendously in processing reservations, but they also support decision-making in marketing and sales. Integration between CRSs and distribution channels can improve efficiency, facilitate control, reduce personnel, and enable more rapid response time to both customers and management requests, whilst enabling personalized service and relationship marketing. Overall, most CRSs tend to serve several business functions as follows: * Improve capacity management and operations efficiency * Facilitate central room inventory control * Provide last room availability information * Offer yield management capability * Provide better databases access for management purposes * Enable extensive marketing, sales and operational reports * Facilitate marketing research and planning * Travel agency tracking and commission payment * Tracking of frequent flyers and repeat hotel guests * Direct marketing and personalized service for repeat hotel guests * Enhance handling of group bookings. Benefits for Tour Operators & Tourism Product Suppliers Processes transactions online through a shared master merchant account which save on online merchant start up fees and monthly fees.
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Provides booking, inventory control, sales, customer analysis and banking reports.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

3. Offer a hot seat feature: Advertise products at a discounted price and sell those last minute empty seats. 4. Gives the end user the ability to search and compare and buy from multiple operators in one place a place that is easy and convenient. 5. Real-time inventory booking system allows multiple distributors to sell your product without the hassle of time-consuming callbacks and double booking. CRSs can be exploited and identified benefits that such systems integration can provide are as follows: * Integration with external reservations networks: Examples here would be airline global distribution systems, or partners corporate reservation systems. Traditionally, third party reservation systems such as hotels.com operated by obtaining guaranteed allocations of rooms from hotels in advance that could then be sold directly to travel agents and the public. However, inventory allocation does not allow the sale of the last available room and disadvantages efficient multi-channel distribution and yield management strategies. To optimize occupancy and average room rates, seamless integration between company and external reservation systems is required so that realtime room and rate inventory is made available to all distribution channels. * In-house reservations networks: Hotel chains and consortia integrate their CRSs with each property based reservation system. Seamless connectivity allows cross-selling between hotel properties and multi-unit distribution strategies. Nowadays, intranets are increasingly used for this purpose.

* Single-property reservations systems: These systems handle reservations that come from different sources, e.g. telephone, letter, fax etc., solely for a hotel property. This level of integration refers to the internal integration of the reservation system with other business systems.

* Property management system (PMS): Integration between the CRS and PMS is required for enhancing guest services by enabling CRM (customer relationship marketing) practices, express check-in/out procedures as well as for increasing operational procedures, e.g. housekeeping, staff scheduling, just-in-time procurement.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Online Transaction Processing

Online transaction processing, or OLTP, refers to a class of systems that facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval transaction processing. Requirements OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) is a methodology to provide end users with access to large amounts of data in an intuitive and rapid manner to assist with deductions based on investigative reasoning. Online Analytical Processing Online transaction processing increasingly requires support for transactions that span a network and may include more than one company. For this reason, new online transaction processing software uses client or server processing and brokering software that allows transactions to run on different computer platforms in a network. Benefits Online Transaction Processing has two key benefits: simplicity and efficiency. Reduced paper trails and the faster, more accurate forecasts for revenues and expenses are both examples of how OLTP makes things simpler for businesses. Disadvantages As with any information processing system, security and reliability are considerations. Online transaction systems are generally more susceptible to direct attack and abuse than their offline counterparts. When organizations choose to rely on OLTP, operations can be severely impacted if the transaction system or database is unavailable due to data corruption, systems failure, or network availability issues. Additionally, like many modern online information technology solutions, some systems require offline maintenance which further affects the cost-benefit analysis. Online Transaction Processing Online Transaction processing database applications are optimal for managing changing data, and usually have a large number of users who will be simultaneously performing transactions that change real-time data. Although individual requests by users for data tend to reference few records, many of these requests are being made at the same time. Common examples of these types of databases are airline ticketing systems and banking transaction systems. The primary concerns in this type of application are the ACID Properties.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

ACID Properties
Atomicity
The atomicity property identifies that the transaction is atomic. An atomic transaction is either fully completed, or is not begun at all. Any updates that a transaction might affect on a system are completed in their entirety. If for any reason an error occurs and the transaction is unable to complete all of its steps, the then system is returned to the state it was in before the transaction was started. Atomicity ensures that all of the steps involved in a transaction complete successfully as a group. If any step fails, no other steps should be completed. An example of an atomic transaction is an account transfer transaction. The money is removed from account A then placed into account B. If the system fails after removing the money from account A, then the transaction processing system will put the money back into account A, thus returning the system to its original state. This is known as a rollback. So when a room is booked through internet transfer of money as well as allotment must both be done or else the entire operation must roll back .

Consistency
A transaction enforces consistency in the system state by ensuring that at the end of any transaction the system is in a valid state. If the transaction completes successfully, then all changes to the system will have been properly made, and the system will be in a valid state. If any error occurs in a transaction, then any changes already made will be automatically rolled back. This will return the system to its state before the transaction was started. Since the system was in a consistent state when the transaction was started, it will once again be in a consistent state. The database inside the hotel in which the room was booked needs to be in consistent even if there is some sort of hiccup in the transaction due to any problem like internet connection etc.

Concurrency
Concurrency controls in a database system ensure that two users cannot change the same data, or that one user cannot change a piece of data before another user is done with it. For example, if you are talking to an airline ticket agent to reserve the last available seat on a flight and the agent begins the process of reserving the seat in your name, another agent should not be able to tell another passenger that the seat is available.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Isolation
When a transaction runs in isolation, it appears to be the only action that the system is carrying out at one time. If there are two transactions that are both performing the same function and are running at the same time, transaction isolation will ensure that each transaction thinks it has exclusive use of the system. This is important in that as the transaction is being executed, the state of the system may not be consistent. The transaction ensures that the system remains consistent after the transaction ends, but during an individual transaction, this may not be the case. If a transaction was not running in isolation, it could access data from the system that may not be consistent. By providing transaction isolation, this is prevented from happening. While booking a room online the room must not be available for booking even while the transaction is being executed.

Durability
A transaction is durable in that once it has been successfully completed, all of the changes it made to the system are permanent. There are safeguards that will prevent the loss of information, even in the case of system failure. By logging the steps that the transaction performs, the state of the system can be recreated even if the hardware itself has failed. The concept of durability allows the developer to know that a completed transaction is a permanent part of the system, regardless of what happens to the system later on. Once a room has been booked that room must show the status as booked (ie unavailable for booking, neither online nor at the hotel reception)

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Payment Gateway
A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. It is the equivalent of a physical point of sale terminal located in most retail outlets. It is a separate service and acts as an intermediary between the merchants' shopping cart and all the financial networks involved with the transaction, including the customers' credit card issuer and your merchant account. Payment gateways protect credit card details by encrypting sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, to ensure that information is passed securely between the customer and the merchant and also between merchant and the payment processor. It reviews validity, encrypts transaction details, ensures they are sent to the correct destination and then decrypts the responses which are sent back to the shopping cart.

How payment gateways work A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information between a payment portal (such as a website, mobile phone or IVR service) and the Front End Processor or acquiring bank. When a customer places an order from a payment gateway-enabled merchant, the payment gateway performs a variety of tasks to process the transaction: 1. A customer places order on website by pressing the 'Submit Order' or equivalent button, or perhaps enters their card details using an automatic phone answering service. 2. If the order is via a website, the customer's web browser encrypts the information to be sent between the browser and the merchant's webserver. This is done via SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption. 3. The merchant then forwards the transaction details to their payment gateway. This is another SSL encrypted connection to the payment server hosted by the payment gateway. 4. The payment gateway forwards the transaction information to the payment processor used by the merchant's acquiring bank. 5. The payment processor forwards the transaction information to the card association (e.g., Visa/MasterCard) 1. If an American Express or Discover Card was used, then the processor acts as the issuing bank and directly provides a response of approved or declined to the payment gateway. 2. Otherwise, the card association routes the transaction to the correct card issuing bank. 6. The credit card issuing bank receives the authorization request and sends a response back to the processor (via the same process as the request for authorization) with a response code. In addition to determining the fate of the payment, (i.e. approved or declined) the response code is used to define the reason why the transaction failed (such as insufficient funds, or bank link not available) 7. The processor forwards the response to the payment gateway. 8. The payment gateway receives the response, and forwards it on to the website (or whatever interface was used to process the payment) where it is interpreted as a relevant response then relayed back to the cardholder and the merchant. 9. The entire process typically takes 23 seconds.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

10. The merchant submits all their approved authorizations, in a "batch", to their acquiring bank for settlement via their processor. 11. The acquiring bank deposits the total of the approved funds in to the merchant's nominated account. This could be an account with the acquiring bank if the merchant does their banking with the same bank, or an account with another bank. 12. The entire process from authorization to settlement to funding typically takes 3 days.
Payment Gateway Process

The Visitor Front End Lets start by considering the pages that your visitors see. These pages allow your visitor to define what they are paying for, instigate the payment process, and then enter their credit card and other information.

First, your visitor needs to choose what they are paying for for instance, a ticket or hotel room. With a price defined, they then fill in a payment form with their information at a minimum their name, credit card information, and address. When visitor enters their information and clicks Submit, a number of backend processes are kicked off.

The Payment Gateway and Fraud Prevention The first backend process is a check of the credit card to try to verify that the card and the charge are valid. When your visitor clicks Submit, a processor called the Payment Gateway takes over. The Payment Gateway the little man in red in our diagram handles the actual backend communications and transactions, contacting the bank,

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reporting back on the results, and moving the money. The Payment Gateway starts by checking to make sure that the credit card number is valid. To decrease the possibility of fraud, it may also check to make sure that the address, name, or credit card CSV code (the three digit code on the back of the card) match. Fraud is unfortunately common even if youre just processing donations, so these checks are an important step in the process. If the card is rejected, the Payment Gateway sends back word to your website so that you can notify the visitor. Otherwise, the process continues.

Merchant Account The money is routed by the Payment Gateway into a bank account called a Merchant Account. When the charge is accepted as valid, the Payment Gateway initiates a process by which money is transferred from the credit card company to a type of specialized bank account called a Merchant Account. A Merchant Account does nothing but hold credit card payments, but you cant accept credit cards without one. Even if you have one for accepting credit card payments by phone, you may need a different one for online payments.

Thanks, Receipt, and Reports With the payment successful processed, the visitor is notified that their payment went through, and the transaction is viewable in reporting tools.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

When the payment gateway reports back that the card has been charged, the visitor is shown a confirmation screen confirming that everything went through successfully. They are also typically emailed a receipt at this point. Usually, any reports are updated in real time, so that youll be able to see within seconds that a payment was made.

Synching Data Youll need to determine how to get the payment data from the payment processor into your own database. The reporting tools that automatically show the payment information are likely to be different from the application you typically use to track constituent information. In order to synch the two sources, you should be able to at least manually export a text file from the payment processing application and load that into your database. If you have many transactions, its also worth looking into ways that you can automatically synch the two data sources with the help of a programmer.

Receiving the Money Last but certainly not least, the money needs to be moved from the Merchant Account to your bank account.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

The money in the Merchant Account isnt accessible to you. If the Merchant Account is in your name, however, the money will automatically be deposited into your more traditional bank account within a couple of days. If the Merchant Account is in a vendors name, that vendor will need to pay you. Vendors typically pay once or twice monthly, either via check or by wire transfer.

Putting it All Together So here it is all back together again.

Whew! Payment processing isnt straightforwar d, but it doesnt have to be baffling. None of the steps are particularly technical or complicated - you just need a sense of the big picture. Security

Since the customer is usually required to enter personal details, the entire communication of 'Submit Order' page (i.e. customer - payment gateway) is often carried out through HTTPS protocol. To validate the request of the payment page result, signed request is often used - which is the result of the hash function in which the parameters of an application confirmed by a secret word, known only to the merchant and payment gateway. To validate the request of the payment page result, sometimes IP of the requesting server has to be verified.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

Case Study
We will study about one of these portals in detail i.e. YATRA.COM There are many agencies that provide travel services to India, arguably one of the most alluring locations on the globe. Yatra is one of these, and if you are thinking about visiting that far-off and mythical land you can always try it out and see if it is what you need. The site comes complete with all the resources you will need for arranging such an experience, as a Book Your Trip section is prominently featured and it will let you specify the kind of trip youre after, be it a round trip or a one way travel experience. When doing so, you also have to set down booking details like your point of departure and your desired destination, as well as passenger details. It is likewise possible to find flights within a short time range if you have to travel in a hurry, either for business or for personal reasons. Further resources include both a Lowest airfares to India and a Holidays by theme section, alongside a travel guide which touches upon accommodation and remarkable destinations. Lastly, live help is provided via a chat feature that will let you engage in conversation with travel specialists that will point you in the right direction. Before we jump onto the technical aspect of a tourism website we need to understand what a website is and how it works? A website is essentially a client server application. (Providers of a resource or service are called servers, and service requesters are called clients). Servers are powerful computers dedicated to managing disk drives (file servers), printers (print servers), or network traffic (network servers). Clients are PCs or workstations on which users run applications. (In case of a website the client is the web browser). Websites generally follow a multi-tier architecture (often referred to as n-tier architecture) in which the presentation, the application processing, and the data management are logically separate processes. The number of tiers in a website varies based on the complexity of the application. Yatra.com Almost all websites incorporate 3-tier architecture. The three layers are as follows 1. The user interface (client) The client runs on the user's computer. In case of a website the client is the web browser on which you have opened the web site. The site on itself is just a module for presenting information to the user. As such it doesnt hold any processing logic. Whenever a user enters some data, the website sends this information the middle tier. The middle tier then processes the data and

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sends a response to the client which is displayed on the website as a result of the users actions. However to some of the data validations do happen at the client side. For e.g. if you enter characters in the mobile number field, the data is validated before it is sent to the middle tier and you get an error response. This saves time and effort. A Client-side Programming Language is used to manipulate the data on the client interface.

2. Middle tier- It is the functional module that actually processes data. This runs on a server and is often called the application server (any PC can act as a server, provided it has enough RAM and processor speed to manage the data processing). In case of a website, the web server is installed on the application server machine. A Web server is a piece of computer software that can respond to a browser's request for data, and deliver it to the browser through the Internet. The website is hosted on the web server, meaning the website resides on the web server. The web server is responsible for the transfer of data between the client and the application server via the internet. This tier is also the brains of the website. Based on the business logic, all the data submitted by the user is processed and the required output is generated. The web server then takes this output and sends it to the client, which in turn displays it to the user. A Server-side Programming Language is used to process the data.

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Application of Information Technology in Travel and Tourism

3. DBMS - A database management system (DBMS) that stores the data required by the middle tier. This tier runs on a second server called the database server. All the information is stored here. Generally the database server is centrally located and is accessed by several application servers. Sometimes both the web server and the database server reside on the same machine. Then such a setup is known as a 2-Tier application.

In simple words Information is presented to the user in the First Tier. The data processing or the business logic is implemented in the Second / Middle Tier. And the Database used to store all the information resides on the Third Tier.

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The below table elaborates the software used by Yatra.com to implement its computer reservations system. Content Management System Liferay Portal is an open source web enterprise portal based on Java. It is a software platform for building websites and web applications PHP is a popular scripting language for creating web pages. Java is a general-purpose language originally developed by Sun Microsystems. JavaScript is a lightweight, object-oriented, crossplatform scripting language, mainly used within web pages. JQuery is a JavaScript library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling and animating Transitional version of XHTML. Used to design the web site Apache Tomcat is an open source Java servlet container that functions as a web server, developed by the Apache Software Foundation. It provides a "pure Java" HTTP web server environment for Java code to run. Omniture Web Analytics is a web site traffic analysis service.

Liferay 5.2.3 Server-side Programming Languages PHP Java Client-side Programming Language

JavaScript JQuery Markup Languages XHTML Transitional 1.0 & HTML Transitional 4.0 Web Servers

Apache Tomcat Traffic Analysis Tool Omniture

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CONCLUSION
Tourism industry in India is growing and it has vast potential for generating employment and earning large amount of foreign exchange besides giving a fillip to the countrys overall economic and social development. But much more remains to be done. Eco-tourism needs to be promoted so that tourism in India helps in preserving and sustaining the diversity of the India's natural and cultural environments. Tourism in India should be developed in such a way that it accommodates and entertains visitors in a way that is minimally intrusive or destructive to the environment and sustains & supports the native cultures in the locations it is operating in. Moreover, since tourism is a multi-dimensional activity, and basically a service industry, it would be necessary that all wings of the Central and State governments, private sector and voluntary organisations become active partners in the endeavour to attain sustainable growth in tourism if India is to become a world player in the tourism industry. To conclude, CRSs are central to the hospitality industry and are becoming the digital nervous system of the hospitality value chain. Due to the current technological advances and economic development, CRSs face several challenges including: their immigration to customer-centered services and infrastructure for providing personalized guest services and CRM practices; adoption of wireless solutions for guests and hotel staff services, e.g. reservations, check-in/out on the move, mobile control and monitoring of occupancy rates; linkages to other electronic systems of partners or third parties for enabling coopetition models (coopetition being a judicious mixture of cooperation and competition by which businesses can gain advantage) and boosting synergies. On the whole it can be said that Information technology has left an indelible mark in the application area of Tourism and Travel. In the coming years, areas like Travel Recommender Systems, GIS, Space Tourism etc will gain popularity and will help in giving a new dimension to the travel and tourism sector. The International market which is growing has been given a shot in the arm with introduction of IT and will stand to gain further from it.