ADOPTION OF ICT IN TOURISM SMES. BARRIERS AND OPPORTUNITIES. THE CASES OF ALBANIA AND MACEDONIA

This paper includes two parts: The first part explores the problems and challenges within the key issues of the tourism industry. This is discussed by examining different aspects of operating e-business systems and The second part analyse three relevant hypotheses of the areas, by examining the conducted case studies of eight tourism organisations against existing researches and studies within the different challenges. Our study is based on the primary and secondary data. Most of the data presented in this paper are results of a decision-maker survey about e-business in Albanian and Macedonian enterprises in 2005. The study consisted of telephone interviews which were conducted in April 2005 with decision-makers in ten Albanian And Macedonian tourism enterprises. Also we conducted an exploratory research study to set three our hypothesis in relation to barriers of ICT adoption. We held interviews with several SME owners, of which some were already online, and some were not.