| By: |
Bory Seng (ICT Policy Department, National ICT Development Authority (NiDA)) |
| Abstract: |
Tourism industry/development constitutes one of only a few viable development
options and is often the principal source of foreign exchange earnings without
exporting any national wealth or resources. It plays an important role in the
sustainable development of many developing countries. The current national
strategic development goal of Cambodia has embraced the tourism sector is one
of the major driving economics sources after garment industry and agricultural
products. In the 2011 report of World Economic Forum (WEF), Travel and Tourism
Competitiveness Index (TTCI) which developed to measure the factors and
policies that make it attractive to develop the Tourism sectors in different
countries ranked Cambodia 109 (Cambodia’s overall score index is 3.44) out of
119 countries. TTCI was computed by using three principal sub indices while
ICT (Information Communications Technology) infrastructure was one of the
individual variable for computing the Travel and Tourism business environment
and Infrastructure sub index. Seeing Cambodia sits in the low position in TTCI
and the awareness of the command of the pivotal ICT role in all functions, the
study attempts to look into in particular development of uses and applications
of ICT in Tourism sector in Cambodia. Furthermore, the study uses the article
on the Adoption of ICT on Chinese’s tourism industry for a benchmarking case
study. As this paper is the initiative study on E-Tourism in Cambodia, the
attempt is to bring the interest of the government and the tourism
entrepreneurs to visualize the importance and competitiveness by utilizing ICT
in the tourism application. |
| Keywords: |
Tourism industry, developing countries, ICT applications/services, TTCI, WEF. |
| JEL: |
L98 M15 M38 G28 |
| Date: |
2012–02 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:snv:dp2009:201287&r=ict |