Public Tourist Information Offices as Booking-Centres for Accommodation

Abstract

Historically the main activity of local, public tourist information offices, hereafter called Public Tourist Offices (PTOs for short), has been to provide information. It is natural, however, for PTOs also to act as booking centres for — the typically great number of — small and medium sized accommodation suppliers in the local area such as hotels, inns, youth hostels and camping sites. In this connection a computerised reservation system capable of handling multiple accommodation offers is of course needed for the booking centre, preferably not just a stand-alone system, but one based on telematics. This paper focuses on the communication link between a local or regional booking centre such as a PTO and multiple (small and medium sized) accommodation facilities in the region, specifically the hotels. The additional communication links between such a centre and domestic/foreign travel agencies and the individual tourists are outside the scope of this particular paper, but of course also such a link should be telematics based via Global or Local Distribution Systems, Videotex systems, Internet etc..