Note: another pragmatic and reformist treatment of tourism. This will be taken up and re-worked. Old text is in grey-brown.
A sketch of the intermediaries of tourism information, for the tourist and the researcher. o = observation, i = interviews, q = questionnaire just sketches some of the methods to obtain more knowledge about the relations of demand and supply, power and information in this field.
What's interesting especially is the changing roles of the players. Can DMO's (Destination Marketing Organisations) assume the role of tour broker? Is their success in this respect tied to their mode of operation (publicly funded or privately managed)?
Can DMO's change into Application AService Providers for their LSPs? (Local Service Providers?) Can LSPs, thus enabled, become tour operators aggregating mini-clusters of destination content? Can tourists / end users become tour brokers, selling packages they know and recommend on their own (over their private company's) web site?