Abstract:
The penetration of the internet in the tourism sector and related industries (transport, hotels, restaurants, etc.) led to the radical changes in their structures and ways of operation. The degree of e-tourism development, however, is different for different countries and regions. Most researches until now were made in the developed countries and for large tourism organizations. There are not enough data about the e-tourism development in the South European countries, including Bulgaria.
As the tourism sector is of great importance for the Bulgarian economy, the present research aims at reveal the situation with the e-tourism development in small and medium size tourism firms (SMTF) in Bulgaria (tour operators, touristic agencies, hotels, travel agencies, etc.). This exploratory study made an attempt to answer the following research questions: what are characteristics of tourism services offered on the companies’ websites; what are characteristics of the information about these services; what is the degree of the tourism online development; and what are the drivers and obstacles to the more intensive adoption of the e-commerce and e-business applications?
The main research method was the analysis of small and medium size companies’ websites in line with the preliminary elaborated indicators, related mostly to the functionality needs service under different rubrics. Additionally we used the data from several interviews with the tourism firms’ managers, some case studies, and data from 29 pilot questionnaires.
The results witnessed that SMTF have some difficulties in introducing entirely online services, and precisely the opportunity for online payment (purchase). The interviews with the firms’ managers revealed that problems were related to the security of online payments; high expenses for this service; internet attitudes of a great part of potential clients from the country; suppliers of tourism services (hotels, air companies, etc.), and relationships with banks.