Center for Travel and Tourism Technology

The purpose of this center—a USC and Coastal Carolina University collaborative—will be to use different technologies to advance tourism for the state of South Carolina.

“The center will marry the best of tourism with cutting-edge technology,” said Rich Harrell, director of the USC Institute for Tourism Research. “An example would be in reservation booking. Researchers in the center would study the best current technologies for making reservations, and the quickest and most sufficient software possible to book people into properties and to keep a record of where they stayed, and how long they stayed, and use that information to market to people again.

“Another example is in Web development and Web marketing. In the past, people used their Web site just for marketing, but now we want to use Web sites to sell a destination, where people can drop symphony tickets into a shopping cart and purchase them for use during their stay.”

Researchers also will use GIS (geographic information systems) to generate information about how to build better tourism facilities on sites with endangered species or animals.