RELEVANCE OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEM IN TOURISM MANAGEMENT (Pages 54-61) by Dr. Sunil Kumar in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

The 21st century is the era of information economy. With economic development and social progress, people’s material and cultural standard of living continues to improve and leisure time continues to increase, tourism has become increasingly popular as a kind of leisure way. The geographic information system applied to tourism management is the preferred platform of tourism information. On the basis of introducing the concepts of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Travel Geographic Information System (TGIS), this paper illustrates the role that the geographic information system plays in tourism management. Tourism has a strong geographical attributes. And GIS itself is information system offering services to geographic research and decision-making, which can play a role in tourism management. In particular, possessing the functions, such as data collection, storage, processing, spatial analysis and so on, GIS directly provides services for tourism management. The roles of GIS in tourism management are mainly in the following areas: conducting tourism information management; being able to produce a comprehensive thematic map. The paper analyzes the existing problems of GIS applications in tourism management. Take a panoramic view of the current technology and management system, the key technology and problems to establish TGIS are: the construction of tourism geographic information database; the establishment of data structure and the data model; the design of Tourism Geographic Information Database System. The essay also proposes the development prospects of the combination of GIS with new information technologies. GIS applied in Tourism Management has played a significant role. At the same time, it should be noted that information technology continuously changes, GIS applied in tourism management also need to improve according to the development of information technology to adapt to the information technology development. Looking the prospects of GIS applied in tourism management, the following areas need to be improved: RS, GPS as supplementary means applied to GIS data collection and update to enhance information collection ability of the system; combining the multimedia and virtual technology with GIS to enhance the attractiveness of the system for tourists; Combining the expert system technology with GIS to enhance the capacity of the system to solve travel problems. Keywords: Geographic Information System (GIS) and Travel Geographic Information System (TGIS), material and cultural standard, tourism management, comprehensive thematic map etc.