Simon Milne a keynote speaker at the International Tourism Sustainability Conference 2011: 21-24 September 2011, Mauritius

Simon Milne presented a keynote at the International Tourism Sustainability Conference 2011 in Mauritius entitled ‘Tourism, ICT and Sustainable Community Development: Global Challenges, Local Solutions’. Simon also chaired a number of sessions. This conference was jointly hosted by the University of Technology, Mauritius and the University of Bedfordshire’s Institute for Tourism Research (INTOUR).

Abstract: Nations, regions and communities are competing (and occasionally collaborating) with each other to attract the ‘elusive tourist’. In particular there is a growing focus on trying to reach a higher yield, ‘interactive’ traveler. Yield driven tourism strategies enable industry revenues to increase without a dramatic growth in visitor numbers, and offer the opportunity to develop a tourism industry that can sustain the economic well-being of future generations, without destroying the cultural and environmental resources that underpin local quality of life.

This paper focuses on innovative ways in which information and communication technologies can being utilized at a local scale to enable tourism to be a more effective tool to increase visitor yield, and, in turn, achieve more sustainable community development outcomes. Drawing on a series of cases from the South Pacific Islands (Tonga, Tuvalu and Niue), New Zealand and Canada the paper explores how ICT can:

• encourage ‘slow tourism’ and increase visitor yield
• build levels of ‘community to tourist’ interaction and understanding
• enable tourism enterprise networking
• increase economic linkage formation
• enhance stakeholder involvement in tourism planning and research

The discussion concludes with the critical observation that the interaction between ICT and tourism is not a one-way process. While ICT can certainly be an important tool to enhance tourism industry performance and community level outcomes, tourism itself can also be vital ‘hook’ through which to encourage ICT uptake and awareness.