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граммного обеспечения во все сферы производственной, организационно-экономической, научной и социальной деятельности сельского хозяйства и перерабатывающей промышленности в целях кардинального улучшения условий труда и качества жизни населения, значительного повышения эффективности производства, глубоких, многоплановых преобразований в этих отраслях в соответствии с мировыми тенденциями при максимально эффективном использовании природных, трудовых, интеллектуальных и материальных ресурсов [3].
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REGIONAL TOURISM IN CENTRAL ASIA: BARRIERS TO INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION
© Rybina L.*
Kazakhstan Institute of Management Economics and Strategic Research, Kazakhstan, Almaty
With increased interest from the international tourists to former USSR countries and particularly Central Asia, the emerging opportunity is to develop regional tourism. Currently, the share of inbound tourism is miserable compared to outbound in all countries in the region. Moreover, a large proportion of the profits from tourism drain out of Central Asia to large travel firms, hotel chains, and booking and transportation providers based in developed countries. As tourism depends a lot on information, the use of information communication technologies can help local tourism industries to cut of Western-based intermediaries and reach existing and potential customers directly. This paper investigates the barriers to ICT adoption by tourism operators in Central Asia. Despite many advantages, the ICT adoption
* MBA, senior teacher.
level in tour operators is relatively low. The results indicate that the main barriers to ICT adoption are the cost of hardware and software, security issues and lack of training.
Tourism is a well developed industry in the world. With saturation of consumer traveling to traditional destinations and increased interest to unexplored nature and culture, there is an opportunity to develop regional tourism in Central Asia. It is hard to attract tourists to individual Central Asian countries due to their remote and landlocked locations, while blended together they can offer a marketable product to foreign tourists and guests from CIS countries. Central Asia comprises five independent states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. All together these countries cover an area of 3,994,300 square kilometers which includes some of the most sparsely populated regions in the world. Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road, which has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia.
Regional tourism enables areas to enjoy economic progress oriented towards sustaining population, diversifying regional economies, creating small business and increasing employment and social welfare [Fleischer and Felsenstein, 2000]. In addition to helping economic development, regional tourism is an alternative to the traditional offer of sun, sea and sand, encouraging diversification towards new destinations and redistributing demand to form sustainable regional tourism destinations. The importance of regional tourism has increased as it has been encouraged by greater demand for this type of tourism [Hall, 2004]. Despite the increased demand in regional tourism in Eastern Europe along with CIS countries entering the producer and consumer markets of world tourism [Balaz and Williams, 2005], Central Asia has not become a major international tourism destination. It is difficult to earn their market share in comparison with mature tourist destinations to maintain a market share [Okumus and Hemmington, 1998; Camison, 2000]. The development of regional tourism in Central Asia is in its infancy and shows a number of shortcomings in the services offered, such as a lack of quality, training of staff, personnel management and infrastructure, while these aspects are important for every tourism business. Tourist sector involves movement of people from different countries for a period of time for the purpose of visiting certain destination and obtaining a range of benefits at visited place. Applying to regional tourism in Central Asia, it means tourists very often do not know the destination prior their visit and they count on the information provided regarding their trip. This factor gives critical importance to the ways and content of communication with real and potential customers.
The market for tourism relies on information. As information and communication technologies (ICT) are developing at a very high pace in the modern
world, it affects most areas of business, economics, and consumer life, as well as the tourism sector. ICTs can be defined as manufactured products and services intended to enable or stimulate information processing, communication, use of electronic means to detect, measure or record physical phenomena or to control physical processes [OECD, 2000]. Starting from the first Computer Reservation System (CRS) in 1950s, the information technologies have transformed the way in which customers plan and purchase their holidays and how tourism industry promotes and sells its products and services. The recent developments of the Internet provide tourism companies with an opportunity to sell directly to final customers, thus cutting off traditional travel intermediaries that connect tourism suppliers and consumers.
Numerous researches studied the implications of ICTs on the tourism industry [Sheldon, 1997; Buhalis, 2003; Inkpen, 1998; O'Connor, 1999, 2000; Palmer and McCole, 1999; Lang, 2000, Standing and Vasudavan, 2001]. If managed in a proper way ICTs can help tourism firms to gain competitive advantage [Alford, 2000; Poon, 1993; Sheldon, 1997; Werthner and Klein, 1999]. Most of studies on ICTs and eTourism have been undertaken for developed Western markets. Another stream of research studies developing regions, like Thailand, which depend mostly on tourism. Nevertheless, little effort is being made to study the ICTs in tourism in the CIS region and especially Central Asia, while the global market for regional tourism and potential interest from neighboring countries make it to appreciate how the technological transformation will influence the tourism industry in this region. In 2010, Internet penetration reached 39.8, 34.3, 16.8 and 9.3 percent of population in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan respectively [Internet World Stats]. Broadband internet services are provided by local area networks in big cities and expand to rural areas. Therefore, ICT applications in Central Asia are worth the attention of researchers and practitioners.
This paper investigates the barriers to ICT adoption by tourism operators in Central Asia. The study focuses on the supply side of the tourism industry. All data were obtained through interviewing fifteen tourism operators using semi-structured interviews. The main research question for this study is: What are the barriers to the adoption of ICT? The study is exploratory by nature, as it is one of the very first attempts to understand the transformation of the tourism industry through ICT and the Internet in Central Asia. Despite many advantages, the ICT adoption level in tour operators usually lags behind the airlines and hotels. The majority of respondents stated that the main barriers to ICT adoption were the cost of hardware and software, security issues and lack of training. The results of the study are summarized in Table 1. Few respondents mentioned barriers from the consumer side including lack of awareness, understanding and acceptance of information communication technologies and even negative attitudes towards ICTs.
Table 1
Barriers to ICT adoption: results of the survey of tour operators
Barriers Percent
Cost of hardware 93
Cost of software 93
Lack of training 87
Security issues 87
Availability of technical support 80
Staff understanding regarding the value of use 27
Lack of awareness, understanding and acceptance of ICTs from consumer side 20
Lack of access to ICTs 13
Negative attitudes towards ICTs 7
As Internet shopping by tourists increases, governments and national and regional tourism organizations in Central Asian countries need to focus on spreading Internet access and setting up linked websites that can cover the entire «value chain» behind international travel. A major challenge will be overcoming domestic bottlenecks in technology, payments, telecommunications, and computer adoption and use. Overcoming these bottlenecks requires dialogue among all the different organizations and people involved in tourism.
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