Tourism and networking. The relational chain between tourim supply and demand on the web

This empirical research aims to describe and analyse in detail the objectives, activities and results obtained by the experimental research programme TUR.N. 2.0 (an acronym for Tourism and Networking). This programme was carried out by a business cluster adhering to the Innovation Pole for Advanced Services, in collaboration with two universities in Abruzzo. Social networks are revolutionizing the normal processes of interaction with individuals and organizations, offering the opportunity to interact and engage, bringing people with shared interests and activities together in virtual spaces that determine concrete choices in real places, transforming the tourism market’s supply and demand chain. In some cases, online networking has replaced traditional intermediation. In other cases, it serves as a marketing tool, enabling new tourism offers previously excluded by tour operators because they were underestimated or not appreciated. In the new sup- ply and demand chain, tourists, intervening first in the decision-making process and later in their evaluation of the service, reveal themselves to be precious strategic advisers, new promoters of the offer or support consultants. From these considerations, the strategic research project TUR.N. 2.0 (Tourism and Networking) has a specific purpose: to build a model for mapping and promoting the offer of the tourism product, through the creation of a software prototype able to ask relevant questions to Web users, creating an incentive for them to establish a strong relationship in order to offer better guidance in the search for information within the Web areas in which the prototype is applied.