INTERNATIONAL BURCH UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ECONOMICS MANAGEMENT AND IT DEPARTMENT

BEAUTIFUL-BOSNIA WEB-BASED SYSTEM

Professor: Meliha Handzi

Students: Adnan Hurem Denan Vili

Table of Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Criteria for good web-based system and comparison ........................................................................... 5 Ease of use and usability ................................................................................................................... 5 User-friendliness and interface ......................................................................................................... 5 Performance ...................................................................................................................................... 6 Storage and availability of large amount of tourism information. .................................................... 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 7 References ............................................................................................................................................. 8

Introduction
Ever since 1993, the World Wide Web (WWW) has really been growing and expanding at large rate. It is because of its easy and platform independent user interface that provides basic support for multimedia (Berners-Lee et al. 1994). The WWW provides substantial advantages for the information provider and the user compared to traditional media. The information contributor is not only able to envision even complex facts in attractive and understandable way but also to broadcast information in a fast and cost efficient way. The user benefits availability of this medium, its comfortable behavior and the possibility to trade information or even to make business transactions with the information provider. At start, the WWW was simply used as a new form of contacting and attracting customers by showcasing the company and the products offered. Today, it is more and more built for electronic commerce. In 1996, more than 50% of US Internet users bought goods online, and those sales amounted up to USD 500 million. These figures are considered to be even larger, as they fail to reveal users who consulted the WWW before purchasing offline (Hamilton 1997). The tourism industry also strives to embrace the advantages provided by the WWW. According to some market studies, online travelling websites are one of the most popular and often visited sites on the Internet (Nua Internet Surveys 1998). All types of tourism information providers have their websites on internet ranging from airlines to hotels car rentals, travel agencies, tour operators and even tourist attractions all over the world. Government tourism offices usually have a Web site about certain facilities or destination and this is usually used as a starting point for tourists (Sheldon 1997). Buhalis (1996) in his study has shown that those kinds of systems can considerably improve the competitiveness of particular destination. People have to bear in mind that using this new medium just to put out online tourism brochures is not enough. Tourists search for tourism Web sites that present value and service. Identified as one of the most significant quality parameters for efficient service is information (Schertler 1994). Thereby a tourism Web site has to center on the content by providing thorough, accurate and real tourism information. Also, the system should supply suitable search mechanism in order to allow the customer to attempt to find wanted information easily and efficiently (Tapscott 1995). After user searches and finds desired content he should be enabled to book those online. At last, system should have ease of adaptability for new information input, whether
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that is from hotels, destinations or whatsoever. A Web-based tourism information system which we chose as an example is Beautiful Bosnia (www.-beautiful-bosnia.com). Beautiful Bosnia distributes information about destinations, facilities and other points of interest for tourists using Internet and database technology. The goal of Beautiful Bosnia is dual: first goal is that tourists must be supplied with wide-ranging, exact and up-to-date tourism information on destinations and places that are interesting to see as well as accommodation and other facilities. Second goal is to draw visitors to visit Bosnia and make a booking via website.

Criteria for good web-based system and comparison

Ease of use and usability

In order for a web-based system to be successful it must be easy to use. If system is too complicated people will be confused or lost after which they will leave the system and thus business will fail. The system must provide easy learning ability, easy access to information and options and provide effective and efficient information. Jakob Nielsen (1994) stated that studies of user behavior on the Web find a low tolerance for difficult designs or slow sites. People don't want to wait. And they don't want to learn how to use a home page. There's no such thing as a training class or a manual for a Web site. People have to be able to grasp the functioning of the site immediately after scanning the home pagefor a few seconds at most. Effectiveness is the totality and accuracy with which users achieve desired goals. It is determined by looking at whether the users goals were met successfully. Efficiency can be described as the speed in which users can find desired information for which they were looking for. Efficiency in webbased systems can be measured by the number of clicks or keystrokes required to find relevant information or complete certain task. Beautiful Bosnia uses simple navigation bars with access to all parts of the system and information. There is also integrated search option on the homepage and on all other parts of the pages. Search on homepage is for whole system while, for example, search on hotels section is strictly bound search for hotels. People can come to desired information within few click as information and goals are stated and shown very clearly using simple methods.

User-friendliness and interface

Definition of user-friendliness by Business Dictionary (2012) states that user-friendly is application, equipment, facility, process, or system that is compatible with its intended user's ability to use it easily and successfully. Layout of system is very important. Website without enough content can be just as unattractive as one that is too busy or complicated with too much information. Relevant, present and important information should be placed where the first part of information is noticed such as homepage. People should not have to search for special or most visited information on your website.
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Website of Beautiful Bosnia is based on concept that only relevant general information is displayed at home page of system or certain, so called, hot news. On the other hand, system provides the most detailed information such as number of rooms in a hotel or restaurants if clients go that deeply into the system or if they want to actually know that. Information is kept up-to-date with the help of information providers (hotels, cafes, destination promoters and etc), of system managers but also clients with the help of their feedback.

Performance
A web-based system must have, in order to be successful, a stable server and storage. Imagine system going offline while few thousand people are using it at the moment. Not only that people will be unhappy and unsatisfied, but this also means that system will lose its users and potential clients. System must also be responsive and have lowest possible download delay. Nobody wants to wait more that few minutes after selecting a hotel in order to book it. If the website loads too slowly people will go to another booking service and use that. System must be optimized and fast but carefully planned for targeted audience. If system provider expects large amount of users then he must use high quality server and other equipment in order to satisfy every customer at same, fast and reliable rate and not first come first served. System should also provide client feedback and FAQ. Stability of Beautiful Bosnia system is very reliable and over the past 12 months the uptime of server is 100%. Managers used extraordinary hosting servers for their database and using backup server in case the main server fails. All the media content and whole page content has been optimized so that website loads fast even on slower computers or connection rates. Booking service works with database such as if client wants certain hotel at a certain date, the system starts checking availability of that booking even before client hits search so that client can get information without large delay or waiting too long.

Storage and availability of large amount of tourism information.

Numerous tourism web systems store tourism information together with HTML commands in plain text files only. This leads to a number of drawbacks such as maintenance, consistency and authorization problems. Database systems are able to support constant multi-user management of
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dispersed information and have been in use for several years. Combining easy to use graphical user interfaces provided by internet with state-of-the-art data management services appear to be promising (Ehmayer et al. 1997). Great amounts of tourism information could be easily given in a consistent way on a large distributed scale. Beautiful Bosnia uses databases for all of the tourism information used in system, but also uses HTML coding for online purposes. These two work perfectly together in a fast and reliable way.

Conclusion
Although Beautiful Bosnia as a small system and business offers wide variety of options, information and uses it still can benefit through improvements. Noticed in the system is the lack of language selection. The system currently offers only English version. Large improvement would be to introduce new language versions such as system in German, Arabic, Turkish and Bosnian version. The option would attract new tourists as many tourists from regions of those spoken languages come to visit Bosnia and portion of them do not speak English fluently or at all. Another improvement of the tourism system would be offering of organized more than one day trips. Managers can organize predefined trips or visits which would last, for example, three, five, seven, ten or more days with schedule and accommodations. System could also benefit if tourist groups can arrange their own multi day arrangements. Managers must define here the minimum and maximum group size for these arrangements. Large benefit would come if the system had more partners, for example, more hotels and in that way users would have wider selection and option to compare them. Also, more accurate map of Bosnia and destinations would be helpful.

References
Berners-Lee T., Cailliau R., Luotonen A., Nielsen H.F., Secret A.: The World-Wide Web. Communications of the ACM, 37(8), pp. 76-82, 1994. Buhalis D.: Information technology as a strategic tool for tourism. Revue de Tourisme, 2, pp. 3436, 1996. Ehmayer G., Kappel G., Reich S.: Connecting Databases to the Web - A Taxonomy of Gateways. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA97), Toulouse, France, Springer LNCS 1308, pp. 1-15, September 1997. Hamilton S.: E-Commerce for the 21st Century. IEEE Computer, May 1997. Jakob Nielsen (1994), Usability Inspection Methods, Morgan John Wiley & Sons Nua Internet Surveys email Newsletter: published by Nua Limited, http://www.nua.ie/surveys. Vol. 3, No. 5, February 16th, 1998. Schertler W.: Tourism 2000 - an information business. In: Schertler W., Schmid B., Tjoa A.M. (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism (ENTER94), Springer, Vienna, New York, pp.20-26, 1994. Sheldon P.J.: Tourism Information Technology. Cab International, Oxon/New York, 1997. Tapscott D.: The Digital Economy. McGraw-Hill, 1995.