Electronic tourism is a new type of application that provides information, often location-based, to tourists. The information includes route guidance, listings of nearby points of interest, guided tours with multimedia presentations and experiences shared by visitors. E-tourism applications can also include storing sound and images recorded by visitors. An architecture to support e-tourism called 'UbiTour' is presented in this dissertation. UbiTour provides different services to visitors such as location-based information, route-guidance, announcements and visitor collaboration. UbiTour aims at using 3G for ubiquitous connectivity and WLAN for high-speed, local information, running on a PDA. WLAN, specifically 802.11, provides a high-bandwidth, broadcast-based connection over a very limited area, while 3G provides a ubiquitous, though lower speed, connection across large metropolitan areas. The services provided by UbiTour have different requirements and constraints, some better suited for WLAN and others for 3G. By seamlessly combining the two technologies, UbiTour can provide a powerful electronic tour guide.

This study examines the personalization of shown travel destination visual images using professional photography upon travel motivations, feelings, and purchase intentions of consumers in the online environment. The research design was experimental and used data from a questionnaire via Qualtrics. A pilot test of the instrument was conducted. The final questionnaire contained 25 items. A total of 194 questionnaires were collected and participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups. Each group of 50 participants was exposed to a specific set of travel destination visual images. Further, several hypotheses related to the effects of personalization, professional photography toward travel motivation, emotion, and purchase intention were tested. The results indicated that: (1) travel motivation was affected by both personalization, and professional photography of travel destination visual image; (2) personalization had an influence on positive emotion, but professional photography did not; (3) it was expected that personalization would act as a “push” factor on travel motivation, and professional photography would influence the “pull” factor on travel motivation, but these two hypotheses were not supported; (4) travel motivation and emotion positively affected purchase intention, however this was only partially supported. Furthermore, the results of the present study implied that the “push – pull” travel motivation theory was considered not entirely separate. Practical recommendations are presented for online tourism marketers to enhance their service.