Winter Tourism Image Improvement with ICT and Future Challenges (Case of Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Monte Negro)

Abstract

ICT has taken a dominant role in the front office sector, global tourism industry. Internet infrastructure acts as a massive platform offering the product directly to the tourists.Tourism information systems based on web, not only reveal colorful picture but they also promote tourism products.This paper is focused on winter tourism image based on ICT, in three regionsof Albanian speakers. It will be a comparison between Albania and three other Balkan neighbors where Albanian is spoken widely, Kosovo,Macedonia and Montenegro.The study notes that, a big part of the hotels that represent a good performance, have a dynamic web page. But what probably requires a bitmore attention from the reservation systems is the on-line booking hotel that brings a loss of customers, which are seeking access to information and time.After this analysis, it is noted that the standards of image web-based building of winter tourism in Albania are still not at the required level. They are positioned at a lower level compared with Macedonia and Montenegro, but higher leveled compared to Kosovo. This observed in terms of ease,efficiency and effectiveness.This paper will conclude that improving the quality of the website, theadvantage of booking on-line privacy and security in cooperation with the banking system will be future challenges of information systems in tourism to improve the image of winter tourism within the region Albanian-speaking.