eTourism: Communication Perspectives

This Swiss-made course is an introduction to the eTourism world, which crosses both space and time, and is always closely connected with communication. It is offered by the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) through Iversity, an online education platform.

The course explores how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) do matter for tourism – both for our personal experience, and for the tourism industry at large. The participants will be exposed to planning, running and evaluating eTourism related activities, especially when it comes to the analysis of online reputation of a tourism destination. The course is taught through a series of case studies, including tourism websites, mobile apps and other online communication tools.

Some of the key concepts and theories covered in the course are:

• Online Communication Model (OCM)
• Roman Jakobson's Communication Model
• Quality of online contents and User Generated Content (UGC)
• Intercultural communication and localisation