ST.

XAVIER’S COLLEGE
Maitighar, Kathmandu

PROJECT PROPOSAL

ON

TRAVEL MATE: “Find other backpackers, make travel friends, and explore
the world”
For the partial fulfillment of Bachelor’s Degree of Computer Science and Information
Technology

Under the supervision of

Er. Rajan Karmacharya

Lecturer

Submitted by

Pragyan Acharya (4759/071)

SUBMITTED TO:
ST. XAVIER’S COLLEGE
Department of Computer Science
Affiliated to Tribhuvan University
 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Travel and Tourism Industry
To introduce the topic of this dissertation, firstly it is important to explain the background which
is represented by the travel and tourism industry. Therefore, in this section the components of the
tourism industry will be exposed and important data regarding to the tourism market will be given
[1].

2.1.1 Definition of Travel and Tourism

“Tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual
environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not
related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited” (WTO, 1992:
subsequently ratified by UN Statistical Commission in 1994) (Middleton et al, 2009).
Travel and tourism does not necessarily involve travelling abroad, it takes place also within
people's home country, on visits to attractions, city breaks, trips to business meeting, sport events
or concerts, and Visiting Friends and Relatives (Rowe et al., 2002).
According to Sharpley (2006), definitions of travel and tourism are concerned with who is or is
not a tourist instead than what a travel and tourism is. They classify the tourist according to various
criteria, for example purpose of trip, distance travelled, length of stay, and are used to distinguish
tourism from other forms of travel for statistical or measurement purposes. A tourist is a person
who goes to another place for private interest of who is sent there by a company, but is not
employed at this place.
Tourism is a broad activity, tourists are not only people on holiday, but may be on business,
religious tourist or pilgrims and students studying abroad (ibid). Business tourists may go to this
place for a workshop, a conference or further education, while private tourists may go there for
adventure, recreation, education, pilgrimage or other purposes (Uherek, 2006).
Tourism involves a change of location and, sometimes, a change from the routine or the ordinary.
There are a lot of purposes and activities measured as “tourism” (ibid).
It is misleading to describe travel and tourism as an industry because there are no clear inputs,
methods of production, and chains of supply or outputs (Sharpley, 2006). But it is important to
know that many sectors are industries in their own right and some tourism products and services
like insurance and guide books are provided by businesses that are not travel and tourism
organizations (ibid).
According to Beaver (2005) “tourism is the temporary short-term movement of people to
destinations outside the places where they normally live and work and their activities during their
stay at these destinations, it includes movement for all purposes, as well as day visits or
excursions”.
There is a problem with the definition of tourist and tourism, the reason is because that these terms
have different meanings to different people, and no universal definition has yet adopted. For
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Webster's New University Dictionary tourism is defined as “travelling for pleasure; the business
of providing tours and services for tourists”, and a tourist as “one who travels for pleasure”. It is
important to have a unique and standard definition because travel research requires it in order to
establish parameters for research content and to do a measurement of tourism as an economic
activity or its impact on the local, state, national or world economy (Singh, 2008).

2.1.2 Types of Tourism

According to different authors, tourism can be classified into various types. They are:

2.1.2.1 Pleasure Tourism

Under pleasure tourism, people go on holiday for enjoyment out of curiosity; to take rest, observe
something new, to delight of good scenery in unknown folklore. Some tourists find pleasure in
traveling to various places. This type of tourism usually depends upon different taste of different
people.

2.1.2.2 Recreational Tourism

Recreational tourism is mainly concerned with leisure and rest and to cover physical and psychical
stamina. This type of tourist usually stays longer.

2.1.2.3 Cultural Tourism

This type of tourism is motivated by the eagerness to learn the different cultures of different
countries.

2.1.2.4 Conference Tourism

This type of tourism is organized in different countries when such convention facilities are
available. These conferences are arranged in the cities best prepared to receive the delegates and
to cover the low occupancy rate of the hotel in the low season. Such types of conference tourism
are growing rapidly in the modern world.

2.1.2.5 Business or technical Tourism

Tourists who come for business purpose are called business tourists. Business or industrialists or
professionals visiting place of their interest or fairs and exhibitions or places of technical
achievements are included under this category.

2.2 The Tourism Industry and Mobile Applications

Having explained the main components in the tourism industry and presenting some relevant data
referring to the tourism market in Spain and Germany, the importance of smartphones and mobile
applications for this industry will be explained.

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The expressions cellular (cell) phone, mobile phone, and wireless phone all refer to the same type
of voice-centric mobile device that has become the indispensable personal communication tool
universally (Zheng et al., 2006). The inventor of cell phone and the first person who used it is
Doctor Martin Cooper; he was a Motorola engineer, who set up the first base station in New York.
The world's first cell phone or commercial portable cellular was the Motorola DynaTAC and the
first cell phone call was made on April 13 of 1978 while walking on a street of New York City
(ibid). These cell phones had consumed a lot of power and it was necessary to recharge them
frequently. The first generation of cell phones were certainly mobile or, more precisely movable,
but they were not very suitable to use, which limited the number of users of the initial systems
(ibid).

In the 1990's appeared the second generation of digital cellular systems such as GSM and TDMA.
These were smaller and lightweight and offered longer talk and standby time. These phones also
had a small monochrome LCD screen display to show phone numbers, signal strength, dialling
status and simple information such as phone book, call log, voice messages, and so on (Zheng et
al, 2006). Afterwards, some “clamshell” cell phones appeared which had the feature that the screen
display was on the back of the cover pane to save space. After that, 2.5G cellular systems went
into operations which had a better user interface, support for short-range network connectivity, a
brightly coloured screen, sharp images, text display, easy use of text input, synchronization with
computers and Personal Area Network (PAN) (ibid).

Smartphone´s were developed and manufactured by mobile network operators in late 1990s.

According to recent studies, the number of mobile phone subscriptions worldwide has reached 4.6
billion and is expected to increase to five billion in 2010 (CBS News, 2009). In some countries,
like China, the usage of mobile phones will grow by 32% (Pico, 2009). In the final quarter of 2010,
smartphones passed global PC shipments for the first time in history (Weintraub, 2011).

2.2.1 Definition of Smartphones

A smartphone is an intelligent phone and an electronic device which has functions of a mobile
phone, while incorporating elements similar to those of a computer (Martin Marquez et al., 2010)
. This device has its roots in the personal digital assistant (PDA) (TopTen Review, 2011) Typically,
smartphone have Internet access, electronic mail, and personal organizer. One of the most
important features of such devices is to allow installation of programs, called applications. They
are usually software packages, but you can also install games, programs of communication, etc.
(Martin Marquez et al., 2010).

The main features of these phones are having a touch screen or an alphanumeric keyboard which
can be visible or hidden (also called QWERTY), a memory slot pair information storage, Bluetooth
connectivity and Wi-Fi. In addition to these characteristics, a smartphone should have a processor,
memory, a high-resolution screen, wireless connectivity (instant access to the web), an operative
system, applications, camera, and video (ibid).

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On January 9, 2007 in San Francisco Apple launched the iPhone. Nowadays, the best top ten
smartphones are iPhone 4 from Apple, Atrix from Motorola, Thunderbolt from HTC, my Touch
4G from T-Mobile, Galaxy S from Samsung, EVO 4G from HTC, Droid X, Nexus S from Google,
Droid Pro and Droid Incredible (TopTen Reviews, 2011). The trend of selling smartphones is
dominating the mobile industry, for instance, in the first three days of selling the iPhone, Apple
sold 1.7 million units (Sybase, 2011).

The Blackberry family is also a very famous smartphone or as they say “best-in-class
smartphones” (Blackberry, 2010). Research In Motion (RIM) is the business behind the innovative
and award-winning Blackberry product line (RIM, 2011). Blackberries were usually wireless data
devices that allowed business people to stay connected with wireless emails (Zheng et al., 2006).
After that, the company added to newer Blackberry devices the voice feature (ibid).

The next table shows the top five smartphone vendors, shipments, and market share from the final
quarter from 2009 to 2010 and the important yearly growth. The smartphones from Nokia are the
most shipped followed by them from Apple and Research in Motion (Blackberry).

In Q4 2010 100.9 million smartphones were shipped and the percentage of smartphones sold is
growing every month.

Smartphones are suitable for busy persons who do not have enough time to be at home with the
computer and do not want to miss any important email or phone call. These persons need to have
a continuous access to proposals, schedules, contact information, business news, etc. Furthermore,
nowadays it is not only a device appropriate for business persons, these devices have evolved into
everybody’s tool (Weintraub, 2011). People can take and display pictures, capture videos, listening
music with the multimedia function MP3 and download applications (or apps) to customize the
smartphone. The applications range from those geared toward business tasks to entertaining games
and everything in between (ibid).

2.2.2 Definition of Applications for Smartphones

Mobile device applications are small bundles of code designed and developed for use on a portable
device. They improve the entertainment features of this device by providing additional utilities
and functionalities; they make the device more useful because it offers games, interfaces, mobile
widgets designed for use on smartphones. It exist a great quantity of applications (Dynamic Digital
Advertising, 2006). Applications are easy to find, cheap and add a real value to the smartphone.

According to Harkins (2011), “a mobile application or app is software that can run a mobile device
such as a cell phone or MP3 player that will allow the device to perform specific tasks that are
typically restricted to PCs”. Smartphones, PDAs and some MP3 players are capable to download
and use apps. For uploading apps to a smartphone it is necessary to have Internet access on the
device and then connect with an app store. The most common apps are web browser; this allows
accessing the Internet from the phone, games and Facebook. In the last few years the demand of
mobile apps has grown to suit busy lifestyles (ibid).

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Additionally, it is important to explain the two concepts of an app store. The first definition
describes a store as an online store for downloading applications, and the second one interprets
this space as the “Apple's online store for downloading free and paid iPhone, iPod touch and iPad
applications from the third-party developers”, it was “launched along with the iPhone 3G in the
summer of 2008, the App Store is accessible from the mobile device, and it is integrated into
Apple's iTunes software” (PC Magazine Encyclopedia, 2011).

The App Store of Apple started a revolution in mobile computing in 2008, because in 10 months
were available 35.000 free and paid apps. In this period downloads passed the one billion mark. In
January 2011, an English woman downloaded the ten billion app. This idea of an app store was
followed by Android, Blackberry and new Windows platforms (PC Magazine Encyclopedia,
2011).

For downloading an iPhone app it is necessary to install iTunes on a computer, the phone, iPod or
iPad. The iPhone apps are not available from any Web site from Internet; the users need to have
the iTunes, which is a popular portal where people download contents legally (Black, 2011). The
apps can be for entertainment or for a practical use. A great variety of apps exists nowadays such
as those which shows news, sports score, weather information, maps, GPS service, games, apps
for cooking, newspapers, music, work, to know the stock prices, languages lessons, for travellers,
and many more (ibid).

2.2.3 Existing Tourism Applications for Smartphones

As mentioned in the former section, the iPhone from Apple is one of the most popular smartphones
nowadays, but in this section also applications of the Android system will be presented.

In July 2008 Apple launched the Appstore with 500 applications. By July 2011, 425,000 apps were
available in Apple's App Store (Elmer-Dewitt, 2011). Over 3,000,000 Apps have been downloaded
until beginning of 2010. In the year 2008 the company Google launched the operating system
Android, which offers more than 200,000 applications in the Android Market (Elmer-Dewitt,
2011). Android is growing very fast, as there are 60 Android-powered smartphones available in
49 countries (Sybase, 2011).

Some mobile applications are free of charge and others have a fee for downloading. The costs for
download applications start from 0.79 Euro until 39.99 Euro according to the research realized by
the author. Only a small percentage of apps are for businesses. In 2009, 4.2 billion US dollars were
spent on applications. In 2013 an estimated value about 30 billion US dollars will be spent on apps
(Sybase, 2011).

An important fact to consider is that the following lists of iPhone and Android applications were
researched during spring 2011 by the author. As the number of new applications is growing
rapidly, new ones for tourism could not be included.

There is obviously more content than just simple information to be distributed by these
applications.

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Some applications give only information, others also offer the possibility to do reservations and
few have payment options. The service offered by an application can be structured in three levels
(Eriksson, 2003):

a) General information: events, accommodations, attractions, shopping, places of interest.

b) Application services:

Timetables, tickets, availability, bookings/reservations, emergency services, geographically

related services such as positioning and location based services, directions, maps, roads, weather
reports.

c) Payment options

Referring to iPhone applications with the operating system IOS and android, consumers can
download applications from iTunes or Google play store where they can find 14.144 applications
for travel. There is also a special section in the Website of Apple, called “Apps for travelling” and
examples according their travel category are the following (Apple, 2011 and The Phone House,
2011).

Airlines: Nepal Airlines, Himalayan Airline, Air Asia, Air Baltic, Air Berlin, Air Canada, Air
Europa, Air France, American Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Alitalia, British Airways, China
Airlines

General information: Beach Guide, Beach Locator, Check my trip, Currency, iPlaya, Kayak,
Packing, The Currency Converter, Trip Advisor, Trip Journal.

Maps: Ahi's Offline Map, Amsterdam Maps, Bump Guide 2010, City Walks, Genius, Smart maps.

Restaurants: All Top Restaurants, around me, Best Restaurants Nepal, Eating Out Guide, My City
Cuisine, Restaurants.

Transport: Bus, Subway or Metro (All subway, All tube Train)

Travel agency: Destination Nepal Tours and Travels Pvt. Ltd, Great Nepal Travels & Tours Pvt.
Ltd., Nepal Kaze Travel (P) Ltd., Rhino Travel Agency.

Many consumers are used to get information with the app Flight Track about gate numbers, delays,
cancellations, alternative flights in more than 5000 airports in the entire world. Also the
applications of Lonely Planet are very popular, not only city guides also the phrasebooks. For
instance, the Spanish phrasebook offers the possibility learning the most common Spanish words
and listen audio translations. The app Currency is useful to check the conversion rates from more
than 100 currencies. The Metro Paris Subway app is a helpful guide to travel through Paris, which
includes metro, suburban train and bus maps and schedules. An interesting app for travelers is also
Postman, which offers the option to send virtual postcards (Apple, 2011).

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Smartphones like Sony Ericsson, HTC, and Samsung have the Android operating system (Rallat,
2009). This system has also his own application store called “Android Market”, and on the website
there is a special section “Travel & Local” (Android Market, 2011). They have 800 payable apps
and 800 free apps. For example, many tourists who are mountain climbers and hikers use the Peak
Finder Alps app which gives them a panoramic view of mountain ranges. According to Mahecha
(2011), Android and Apple drive the growth of the smartphone in the United States of America
because these users make a lot of downloads of applications compared to those who use other
types of mobile phones.

2.3 Consumer Profile Related to Smartphones

In this section the concept of consumer profile will be introduced. The main question is to analyse
which type of consumer uses these new technology devices.

Referring to the profile of smartphones users it is essential to define first the concept. Consumer
profile is a detailed analysis of the purchasing habits of a group of consumers to a particular
product. This outline assess significant demographic and psychographic influences such as the
user's age category, gender, education, occupation, income level, marital status, area of residence
and purchase behaviour patterns. Consumer profiles are built up from extensive market research,
they are used for market segmentation purposes, and the knowledge of the consumer profile is, for
example, very important in the determination of a creative advertising campaign (All business,
2000 and QFinance, 2009).

As this topic is quite recent, there are several studies and statistics about the consumer profile for
smartphone users. The author has chosen the most relevant studies according to her point of view.

The “Study of Internet and interactivity in mobile phones and other portable devices” of IAB Spain
Research reveals that the increase of the number of smartphone users has led to a raise of different
consumer profiles. In this study there are mainly four smartphone consumer profiles (IAB Spain
Research, 2009):

- Basic user: persons who mainly use the device for calling and sending text messages.
- Players and social network users: linked to the profiles of younger consumers and
socialization time.
- Internet surfers: important use of the web environment
- Professional users: who mainly use the phone for business purposes

This research highlights that there is an increasing number of consumers who give their
smartphone a mixed use, professional as well as personal.

On the other hand, according to Sybase 365, a leader company in software for managing, analyzing
and mobilizing information that belongs to the SAP Group, there are so many smartphones such
as different types of users. Sybase 365 has divided into six different profiles of users of
smartphones. This research on mobile commerce has developed in 16 countries, over 4100 users,

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and each archetype has been generated using all nationalities, ages and both sexes. The six different
profiles of smartphone consumers according their usage are the following (Soria, 2010):

- The enthusiast: he uses his smartphone to manage every aspect of his life like in a practical
way like paying bills, find information, organize his social life, etc. This profile is 26% of
mobile users surveyed (ibid).
- The computer specialist: is a person, who has technical knowledge and is trendiness, it
means that he has usually the newest apps. He is proactive towards the next generation of
products. The result of the study was that 23% of the population using smartphones fits
this profile (ibid).
- The social individual: uses its smartphone to work quickly and make different connections.
He is interested mainly in data collection, offer coupons and social networking. The result
of the study was that 19% of users fit this profile (ibid).
- The sophisticated: they use smartphones to keep up their finances, and engaged anything
from the routine such as see the balance, to complex activities like see their investments.
These users are not interested in connecting to social networks, because the device is used
as an organizer, but show much interest in mobile banking and mobile shopping service.
The result of the survey was that 13% of the smartphone users fit this profile (ibid).
- The researcher: uses his smartphone as information seeker like political activities, as well
as local news. These “researchers” represents 17% of the surveyed population that uses
smartphones (ibid).
- The hermit: is the oldest and most representative segment of the Western World. Only uses
the smartphone as a phone and shows no interest in other services. The hermits represent
2% of the population surveyed in the study (ibid).

Another research about the android reveals that the android user base consists mainly of young
people adopters about three quarters of whom are previous Apple customers. This survey also
reveals that 50% of iPhone users replaced conventional mobile phone while 40% replaced other
smartphones. The most commonly used feature is the email, 70% of users check email on the
android at least once a day. 60% of users browse the internet at least once per day and three quarters
of users do more web surfing on the smartphone than on their previous device (Rubicon
Consulting, 2008).

To summarize the main findings of the statistical data about the consumer profile of smartphone
users, it can be stated that the socio-demographic profile of the smartphone owners are more men
(66.8%) than women (33.2%), young people between 12 and 35 (32.5% between 25 and 34),
mostly single (59.4%) and in an upper-middle socioeconomic level (Ignis View, 2011).

The appearance of different consumer profiles will lead companies to different market strategies
to when advertising and selling their smartphones.

2.3.1 Consumer Behavior and the Usage of Tourism Applications

According to Schiffman and Kanuk (2005, p.8), consumer behavior is defined as “the behavior
that consumers have when they search, purchase, use, evaluate and dispose products and services

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that they believe that will satisfy your needs”. Consumer behavior focuses on how individuals
make decisions to spend their available resources like time, money and effort, on consumption-
related items. That includes what consumers buy, why, when, where, how often, how they evaluate
it after and what is the influence of this evaluation in future purchases, and how consumers dispose
of them. Solomon et al. (2007, p.6) incorporated the concept of consumer needs and wants into
their definition as follows “Consumer behavior is the process involved when individuals or groups
select, purchase, use or dispose of products, services, ideas or experiences to satisfy needs and
desires”.

But what is really significant and interesting for this thesis is the consumer behavior in the tourism
sector. The tourism consumer must be studied in the whole process of consumption, beginning
with the moment in which the need for travel appears until when the tourism consumer returns
home and share the memories of that trip with others (Sobejano, 2009). With the growing number
of users and greater penetration into people’s life, smartphones appear to have significant influence
on the travel process. It is important to examine how smartphones affect tourist behavior (Wang
et al, 2011).

Over recent years there is a wide debate on the implications of online services and Internet in
activities that comprise the tourism sector. Already in 2000, Esteban Talaya et al. stated that
Internet users will demand in the near future the need to access to relevant information quickly.
The smartphones represent a perfect opportunity to offer consumers all type of services directly,
avoiding the use of traditional intermediaries.

Tourism is an experiential and intangible product where travelers are continuously involved in
complex decision processes (Jeng and Fesenmaier, 2002). Tourists constantly search for
information to reduce the uncertainty and support their purchasing decisions.

Travelers take decisions about where to go, to stay and to eat, and what, where, when and how to
experience all the facilities of a destination. To take these decisions, they must have access to all
the relevant information needed. The following table lists the different methods currently used by
tourist companies in their communication with customers (Eriksson, 2003):

Table 3 Different methods used by tourist companies in their communication with customers

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Source: Eriksson, 2003.

Today, the most common way of serving customers with information during their trip, is by printed
material handed over at a front desk. Another common way is by speaking directly to customers
over the phone or at a front desk. These methods have obviously disadvantages. Referring to
printed material, the communication is only one way and the information starts to obsolete as soon
as it leaves the printing process. The cost of serving customers by talking directly to them is
extremely high (ibid).

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As part of improving its competitiveness, the tourism industry needs to create the ideal tourist
service: this should act as a one-to-one service, in the preferred language, be available 24 hours a
day and seven days a week, all year around, with customized, constantly up-to-date information
and flexible services (ibid).

The development of mobile applications can fulfil many of these needs and provide better services
at a lower cost if services are based on concepts such as self-service, user needs and multi-
language.

Gretzel et al. (2006) identified purchasing activities within three stages of tourism consumption
i.e., pre-consumption stage, consumption stage and post-consumption. At each stage there are
different objectives and contents. In the pre-consumption stage, information is used for planning,
expectation-formation, decision-making, transactions and anticipation. In the consumption stage,
information is used for connection, navigation, decision-making, and on-site transaction. In the
post-consumption stage, information is used for sharing, documentation, external memory and re-
experiencing.

The travel process includes planning the activity, booking, travelling, to be at the destination and
the phase after the travel.

At the first step the consumer has an idea of a tourist destination. So first he selects the destination
by searching for information. The planning process includes the information phase, the price
comparison, the product information and decision, the selection of the provider, booking and the
detail planning. Afterwards, the journey to the destination takes place and the traveller experiences
the destination on-site. Having finished the trip, the tourist reflects about his journey and possibly
will share his experiences with other people.

Information and booking:

At the first stage the consumer can use apps of travel guides like Lonely Planet or Marco Polo to
collect information about the travel destination, in this case Nepal. Here he can look for the main
tourist attractions, the top sites to visit, the climate, the recommended areas to stay for
accommodation. For instance, maps can be found with the application of Google Earth or Google
Maps. Information and booking services are offered by several applications; in this case the tourist
searches a hotel in the main centre of Pokhara with Tripadvisor.

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References

[1 Moritz Christian, "Modul Vienna University," [Online]. Available:

] https://www.modul.ac.at/index.php?eID=dumpFile&t=f&f=5212&token=574c2c521a177ac124fa57d
70a466744635b16ac. [Accessed 28 April 2018].

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