European Commission iSet Project

 

The ICTHR in Bournemouth University has recently completed successfully iSet, a European Commission project, under the leadership of Professor Dimitrios Buhalis.

I-SeT is one of the many innovative eTEN projects. eTEN is as European Community Programme which is designed to expand the availability and use of services which make use of telecommunication networks (e-services) in the European Market. It focuses on public services, in areas where Europe has a competitive advantage. The programme aims to accelerate the take up of services in order to sustain the European social model of an inclusive, cohesive society. The eTen programme supports activities necessary for the market validation or deployment of certain trans-European electronic services in the European Union .In this case, i-SeT falls under one of the six themes : Services for the SMEs.( services that facilitate the participation of SMEs in the e-economy). Market validation projects are focused on the testing of the viability of a service. Projects in this phase must start from an existing operational or fully developed and tested prototype system or service. This is indeed the case with i-SeT which builds on the success of the wiPlus (http://gr.wiplus.com/ ). Market validation includes demonstration of a pilot service peer review of the service; feedback from users; reports on findings including assessment, actions for deployment and a business-investment plan.

i-SeT is an integrated internet based tool-set that targets the integration of the value chain of Small and Medium Hospitality Organisations (SMHOs) by supporting their management activities and providing specific services for specific actors. More specific, the i-SeT service is an integrated internet based tool-set that targets the integration of the value chain of SMHOs by supporting their management activities and providing specific services for specific actors, namely: customers, employers, other SMHOs, hoteliers, public authorities and the wider public. More specifically the service provides:

    • The “Before” service where the end customer “visits” the SMHO where he/she gets (through the i-SeT portal) tourism information as well as a reservation service.
    • The “During” service where the end customer “gets” (through wi-fi connections) internet access and a virtual concierge service (information related to the local weather, transport, attractions etc.)
    • The “After” service where the end customer “gets” selected CRM (customised information, special offers etc.) and loyalty management services.
    • Last but not least, in the intra-organisational level the hotel employee will have access to an easy to use management system that permits the administartion of all the above activities (i.e. billing, user profiling, etc.)
    • In the inter-organisational level the hotel owner will have access to a vertical portal dedicated to clustering and networking activities of the local tourism SMEs.


    • Partners included
      DELOITTE & TOUCHE CONSULTING (Gr), Coordinator, Greece
      GLOBO TECHNOLOGIES Technical developer & Commercial Exploiter, Greece
      BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY, E-tourism Expert United Kingdom
      DIGIPRO Pilot Coordinator Cyprus
      AGROTOURISTIKI Pilot Coordinator Greece
      PROVINCE OF BRESCIA Pilot Coordinator Italy
      VALENCIA FOUNDATION Pilot Coordinator Spain
      DELOITTE & TOUCHE CONSULTING (POR) Business Planning & Marketing research experts Portugal
The project’s objective was to validate the pan-European market potential and to develop an integrated business plan for the i-SeT wireless Internet solution, which addresses the needs of small and medium-sized hospitality organizations (SMHOs) in the tourism sector. The service validation took place in 4 countries (Greece, Spain, Cyprus and Italy) in the facilities of the validation partners. The insights and data from the service validation were used for developing the Deployment Strategy and Business Plan that gave the basis to position the i-SeT tool-set in the market and deploy it first in the 4 European countries and then Europe-wide. The i-SeT consortium distributed the service through a network of stakeholders, built and maintained its components and developed new innovative value added services through a collaborative Research & Development approach.

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