National Co-operation and Strategic Alliances

The rapid growth of the Internet as a distribution channel for tourism products has intensified the interest for electronic information systems and networks within the tourism business. New entrants on the Internet are choosing tourism as an area for new business, and traditional tourism companies are rethinking strategy and IT-investments to incorporate Internet. A number of actors are looking for ways to create business through this new medium. This paper focuses on how the organised part of the tourism business in Norway has met this challenge by choosing co-operation and strategic alliances as the main elements of their strategy. The paper is based on a project led by NORTRA, the Norwegian Tourist Board, and run by the Norwegian Computing Centre. Experiences from the first phase of the project were presented at ENTER96 (Aanonsen, 96). The current phase leads up to launching an application on the Net by January 1. 1997. In this paper we discuss the main challenges of this phase, which are building the network for national co-operation within the tourism industry and establishing strategic alliances within the IT and Internet world.