The Proliferation of the Online Sales of Tourism Activities

Abstract

The online sales of tourism activities are increasing despite once-sluggish growth, especially in contrast to other tourism segments, i.e., transportation and accommodation, which already had a more significant share of online sales. This article aims to provide a narrative as to why tourism activities took longer than other travel segments to be sold online and why the trend of being sold increasingly online will continue into the future. The article concludes that two key factors, the nature of tourism activities (i.e., subjective and customizable) and technological advancements, have contributed to this trend. These technological advancements include tourism activity booking software-as-a-service (SaaS), innovation in payments technology, application programming interfaces (APIs), big data, and dynamic packaging. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated this trend.