Reference model of an electronic tourism market

The distribution of tourism services from the supplier to the customer presently takes place via different distribution channels and service- and travel-type specific electronic markets (i.e. tourism information systems). This coexistence of heterogeneous electronic markets results in non-uniform information available about tourism services, non-uniform access to tourism services and a lack of interoperability between different tourism markets. The objective of the project presented in this paper to avoid these problems is the elaboration and implementation of a methodology for unifying different electronic tourism markets. In order to reach this objective, a framework for modelling electronic tourism markets, a reference model, has to be elaborated. Instead of a fix standard the reference model provides an open specification of electronic tourism markets based on a uniform language with standardized building blocks as vocabulary. The reference model presented in this paper focuses on the conceptual modelling of electronic tourism markets on an abstract, communication mechanism independent level, based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In this way, the reference model enables the description of specific models in a form understandable for all communication partners and supports the interoperability on different concrete communication levels.