Information Management obstacles in a Tourism Portal Setting

Other conference contribution, 2005

Information portals continously struggle with providing a relevant and timely set of information services according to the intended target group. The main information management obstacle relates to the core business model of beeing a portal that provides easy access too sub-domains of information services and information systems, meaning that the portal in it self doesn’t have full information ownership. Poor information quality severely decreases the actual business value of any portal. The business case in this paper illustrates the pre-dominant struggle for any corporate portal, be it internal or external. The Swedish Travel & Tourism Council provides an Internet portal (VisitSweden: www.visit-sweden.com) that aims at beeing the easiest access point to the vast tourism offerings in Sweden. It could be seen as set of information services that tries to provide an simple navigation structure (taxonomy) on top of several sub-sets of business specific portals within tourism. The main problem for VisitSweden has always been poor information quality, which is inherited from the extremely complex business landscape that prevails in the tourism industry. The case study illustrates the evolution of the site in three main efforts, which unmask the core problem in information management, namely information ownership and clear business roles in the content provision process.