Tourism and e-commerce

Consists primarily of the distributing, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. It can involve electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, e-marketing, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), automated inventory management systems and automated data collection systems. It typically uses electronic communication technology such as the Internet, extranet, e-mail, e-books, database, and mobil phones. All these are usually used in tourism activity. E-commerce was initially used for advertising the products and services offered by the tour- operators. At present this way of commerce is more and more used by the potential tourists. Romanian tourism agencies and tour-operators have begun to line at the global trends and they are building the sites, not only for information, but also for selling touristic products and services. For example, in September 2006, from 695 ANAT’s (National Association for Tourism Agencies) members, 657 (94.53%) have an e-mail and 435 (62.59%) have sites.