Design and Implementation of a Computerized Tourism booking System
CHAPTER ONE
Aims and Objectives of the Study
The aim of this study is to develop an interactive website that helps potential visitors get enough information about the various destinations in Niger state that may ease their tour. It has the following objectives:
- To explore the problems encountered in the management of the existing manual tourism system
- To design a web based system that will make information more detailed, effective, and accurate, and ease the delay hitherto encountered with the existing manual system.
- To implement a web based tourism system that will help people appreciate the state’s natural endowment and also serve as a complementary tool for tourism management.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Tourism
Tourism involves the activities of people travelling and staying in a place away from their home environment for leisure, business or other purposes. Tourism is travel for pleasure; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. Tourism means the temporary short-term movement of people to destinations outside the places where they normally live and work, as well as their activities during their stay at these destinations. It should be noted that all tourism should have some travel, but not all travel is tourism. Tourism may be international, or within the traveller’s country. Mathieson and Wall (1982) defined tourism as the temporary movement of people to destinations outside their usual places of work and residence, the activities undertaken during their stay in those destinations, and the facilities created to cater to their needs. Tourism embraces nearly all aspects of our society. Apart from its importance to economic changes, human socio-cultural activities and environmental development, tourism is related to other academic subjects such as geography, economics, history, languages, psychology, marketing, business and law, etc.
The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go “beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only”, as people “traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes”.[2]. Little wonder Saint Augustine in his popular quote states that “The World is a Book and Those Who Do Not Travel Read Only a Page.” People tour for various reason among the common ones are:
- To spend holidays leisurely
- To increase knowledge and life -experience
- To visit friends and relatives
- To attend business and professional engagements
- To get health treatment
- To undertake religious pilgrimages
- Any other personal motives
According to Prakash and Yahya ( 2013) the tourism sector has grown rapidly to become a pillar of the global economy, political cooperation, social change and far – reaching advances in technology; both in communications and infrastructure. Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country’s balance of payments. Today, tourism is a major source of income for many countries, and affects the economy of both the source and host countries, in some cases being of vital importance. When it comes to factors that promote National growth, the role of tourism cannot be undermined. On the other hand, domestic tourism is also beneficial and of great significant to the country.
Ferdrerico (2003) explains that it is now generally recognized that tourism can make a vital contribution to employment, export receipts and national income in most countries and regions. Furthermore, tourism is often identified as the most promising driving force for the economic development of less developed countries and regions endowed with areas of natural beauty including Small Island Developing State because it offers them a valuable opportunity for economic diversification. Furthermore, given that the sector provides a considerable amount of jobs for women and unskilled workers, tourism can significantly contribute to empowering women and alleviating poverty.
Different people have their views of tourism, reason to tour and the choice of places and environments. One may found a certain environment convenient and educative for leisure and tourism whereas the other person may dislike such environment. This brings about the concept of milieus of tourism.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY AND SYSTEM ANALYSIS
Methodology Adopted
System analysis describes the process of collecting fact in respect of the existing system, its procedure and mode of operation. This is to obtain a full picture of the prevailing situation so that an efficient and effective computerized system may be designed and implemented.
Asika (2006) defines it as any organized enquiry that aims at providing information for solving identified problem. It is after the careful examination of the system that the new program can be design. A methodology can simply be as a set of procedure that one follows from the beginning to the completion of the software development process.
This research work adopts the Object Oriented Analysis and Design Methodology (OOADM) because of its unique process of analyzing a problem and hence enhances the deduction of the project’s requirement that is determining what the system is supposed to do. With this methodology, a problem can be analyzed with an approach also developed in solving such problem.
CHAPTER FOUR
SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
Objectives of the Design
The objectives of the design are
- To ensure the system is robust i.e the system should be resistant to component failure regardless of wrong user inputs or unexpected conditions
- Ensure the system is compatible with other platforms, hence the design ensures that when deployed to other platforms it will pose no problem.
- The proposed system will provide strong restriction to any form of authorized access to the system
- The design also assures the navigation is keep simple, in a manner that is intuitive and predictable
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATION AND CONCLUSION
Summary
This research was carried out in order to provide an online tourism booking system. Hence the main objective of this project has been fulfilled as the researcher have shown the best solution through the use of a web based approach in developing a tourism booking process which makes up the lapses of the existing system using a communicative and a user friendly approach. The program has all the needed intelligence to support decision making in the choice of tour destination and accommodation. It went further to analyze the present procedure/traditional management system, identifying weaknesses of the system. These weaknesses observed gave the need for a new, convenient and effective way of handling tour pre-activities.
A suitable system methodology was adopted during the design of this system after a detailed examination and analysis of the existing system was carried out, hence paving way for the design and implementation of the new system. The best programming tool was used in the implementation of the new system.
Recommendation
Due to the limitations encountered during the execution and completion of the research work, the scope of study was narrowed the implementation to only few tourist destinations within. Having presented all that is necessary to arrive a meaningful deduction for a successful implementation of this research, the following recommendations are suggested by the researcher which is aimed at improving and correcting some lapses.
- Epileptic power supply should be managed properly since this is a client server system running on the internet, which means the servers must be online 24 hours every day.
- Finally, training of staff in each tour destination registered in the system in the area of computer usage and literacy, this will help in correction, fast and easy retrieval of records.
Application Areas
This system is vast and can accommodate different organisations, different companies relating to tour and travels can register their services with the system, such as the transportation companies, medicals, Hotels etc. Hence the system can also serve a mediator between the tourist and such companies.
Suggested Areas for further Research
This work can be extended to include a module for different companies to advertise their goods and services to all users of the system and also the use of online payment. This will provide more user friendly operations for the users of the system.
Conclusion
The success of very organization depends solely on management and how effective they reach their target audience or market. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has gone a long way in improving the inconvenience of various departments in disseminating information.
This project was successively carried out in order to provide an online approach to the tour destination management that can be able to be able run alongside with the traditional classroom system, to augment and make up for all the areas in which it existing system is lacking. A user can sit at the comfort of his home, make enquires, choose a perfect tour destination, book reservations and payment without the stress and inconveniences the existing system holds. Also, there will be no difficulties in sorting of records stacked for a long time, improper dissemination of information, lapses in the mis-allocation of same center to different customers and lots more. The system uses a database unique identification system to check possible matches and allocations.
REFERENCES
- Asika N. (2006). Research Methodology in the behavioural Sciences, Lagos: Longman Nig. Plc.
- Broch, M. and Isaksen, A. (2004) Knowledge Intensive Service Activities in the Norwegian Software Industry. Part project report from the OECD KISA study http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/32/22/29965961.pdf
- Buhalis, D. (2003) E-Tourism: Information Technology for Strategic Tourism Management. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
- Buhalis, D. and Law, R.(2008) Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet – The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29. pp. 609-623. 2008.
- Dmitry Zamula, (2012) “Architecture of a Semantic Framework for E-Tourism Applications”, Proceeding of the 12th conference of Fruct Association, ISSN 2305-7254, Oct 2012.
- Frederico N.,(2003) A New Approach to Sustainable Tourism Development: Moving Beyond Environmental Protection DESA Discussion Paper No. 29 ST/ESA/2003/DP/29 retrieved fromhttp://www.un.org/esa/papers.htm on 3rd February 2017