The Influence of E-Commerce in Encouraging the Tourism Industry in Malaysia

Abstract

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play the significant role in country such as Malaysia, India and Indonesia (developing countries) as they build and improve the economy sector. While the e-commerce stands for electronic commerce may give a significant impact especially for the travel or tourism industry that was part of the SMEs as there were many mediums of information sharing on the Internet. The research uses an analytical method to find the enhancement ways of tourism in Malaysia. New IT customers are starting to browse items directly from the provider's website (web pages), resulting in customer-friendly pricing. As e-commerce expansion has revolutionized the tourism business, an efficient electronic commerce business framework and e-commerce strategy development for tourism business agencies management is developed. Electronic commerce for travel agencies has adopted a B2B strategic alliance to strength their competitiveness advantage on the e-commerce travel or tourism market and because it was an effective tool for getting the greater profits. However, the electronic commerce adoption in developing countries by SMEs is low because several factors such as the weakness of a suitable model for implementation of e-commerce. Objectives of the research is to investigate the reasons that affects the use of electronic commerce obviously in Malaysia (developing countries) especially in the tourism industry. Therefore, this research to provide a detail explanation of the reasons that influence e-commerce adoption on the tourism industry. In existing literature review, several research report that cover a much of model and generic framework about using the technologies and give a general understanding of technologies adoption is proposed. However, none prepare the typical contextual ideology or model of business in the particular developing countries. Therefore, the model for electronic commerce implementation in developing nations are highlighted, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Finally, some suggestion was highlighted that may give the researchers a more and better understanding of how to encourage the electronic commerce adoption in developing nations which they have not yet started using electronic commerce especially in the tourism or travelling industry.