Resumen
This article reports that travel and tourism have illustrated how e-commerce may change the structure of an industry and in the process create new business opportunities. The deployment of more specialized services, flexible network configurations and further consumer integration will lead to smart marketplaces that integrate all stakeholders. The underlying pervasive information technology scenario enables as well as enforces this development, demonstrating that tourism is an interesting field of application as well as research. As such it may also be of interest for other industries to learn from this development and to understand emerging e-marketplaces. Tourism is an information-based business, the product is a "confidence good" and an a priori comprehensive assessment of its qualities is impossible. Tourists must leave their daily environment to consume the product. At the moment of decision making, only an abstract model of the product is available, based on information acquired through multiple channels, such as television, brochures, word-of-mouth, or the Internet.