Report on World Tourism Economy Trends (2018) Excerpt -14 Cloud computing will propel digital management and digital marketing of tourism industry

1. Characteristics

(1) Cloud computing integrates virtual resources

Cloud computing is the Internet-based mode for increase, use and delivery of related service and usually involves the provision of dynamic, scalable and usually virtual resources through the Internet.

As defined by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), cloud computing is a payment mode based on the quantity of use. Such mode provides a network access, usable, convenient and on demand, to a shared configurable computing resource pool (resources include network, server, storage, application software and service), and such resources can be quickly provided with a very tiny quantity of management work or very little interaction with service providers. “Cloud computing” application services gradually enlarge the scope of application and produce inestimable influences. Examples include XenSystem, Intel and IBM, which are already very mature in foreign countries.

(2) Cloud computing involves a vast server scale

“Cloud” involves a considerable scale. Google’s cloud computing now has more than 1 million servers, and Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Yahoo and other clouds all have hundreds of thousands of servers. Corporate private clouds usually have hundreds of thousands of servers. “Cloud” can confer users unprecedented computing capacity.

(3) Cloud computing supports resource access anytime, anywhere

Cloud computing allows users to access application services on various terminals in any location. The requested resources come from the “cloud”, instead of fixed tangible equipment. An application runs in certain position of the cloud, but actually users don’t have to know about that or worry about concrete position where the application runs. Instead, users only need one notebook computer or mobile phone to realize everything we want, even including supercomputing tasks, through network services.

(4) Cloud computing provides low-cost advantage

A “cloud” takes such measures data fault tolerance with multiple copies and computing nodes that are isomorphic and interchangeable to assure high reliability of services, which makes cloud computing more reliable than local computing.

We can build a cloud with very low-cost nodes due to special fault tolerance measures, automatic and concentrated management of the cloud makes enterprises no longer necessary to pay the rising cost of data centers, and the universality of “cloud” remarkably increases the resource utilization efficiency than traditional systems. Therefore, users can fully enjoy the low cost advantage and usually spend hundreds of US dollars and several days to complete tasks that used to demand much higher cost and time in the past. Gartner has recently announced the 2017 global ranking of cloud computing, as shown in Table 2.

Table 3.4 Global Cloud Computing Ranking 2017

Source: Sohu.com

(5) China’s cloud computing market keeps growing annually but still lags behind US

The market research firm Gartner's research report shows that the global computing market was sized at USD 175 billion at the end of 2015, and this figure is expected to reach USD 203 billion in 2016 and further exceed USD 300 billion and hit USD 312 billion in 2019. The vast market demand will further propel the cloud computing industry to maintain rapid growth. In the five years to come, the industry is expected to maintain a CAGR of more than 30% and remain a highly promising hotspot of venture capital. Data show that China recorded the total cloud financing of up to RMB4.98 billion, close to RMB5 billion by June 10, 2017, and Chinese cloud computing service providers cumulatively raised RMB13.9 billion, near RMB14 billion. Despite rapid growth, the Chinese market still lags behind US, and is expected to lag behind US for 5 years in future. In particular, when the cloud service just landed in China, US had already realized mature application from enterprises to the public, let alone the huge gap in the pubic cloud market size. In 2014, the cloud market was about USD 38,216.6 million in US, but only USD 937.9 million in China. We expect that, by 2020, the figure of US will reach USD 123,499.9 million and the figure of China will be USD 5,242.2 million, thereby narrowing the gap from nearly 40 times in 2014 to 23 times.

Figure 3.14 Public Cloud Market Sizes Comparison of China and America

Data Source: Worldwide Public Cloud Service Tracker

(6) Enterprise users highly favor cloud products

Considering the aforesaid advantages of cloud computing services, many enterprises select “cloud” as the technical foundation driving their efficient business operation. In April 2016, the Mobile Informatization Researching Center initiated a survey on the reason for enterprises’ first deployment of cloud products or services, and the result combs the advantages of “clouds” in corporate business.

2. Application to tourism industry

(1) Cloud computing makes intensive acquisition of data and information

It will be more convenient to obtain resources and information. With cloud computing, we will no longer spend a lot of money on hardware and software but only need to apply for services to the cloud computing center, and pay for the services based on our need. We will no longer need to buy servers and software but access resources at the center. Cloud computing is closely associated with everybody. In future, everybody can apply for the cloud computing service with the development of smart phones, flat-panel TV and flat-panel computers.

(2) Cloud computing provides a data platform for tourism information and resource construction

To achieve smart tourism, we can use the tourism management platform, national tourism resources, cloud computing and IoT technology to realize intensive, smart and uniform tourism management and build a cloud database of tourism resources. The government can strengthen cloud computing investment and infrastructure construction and build the standard tourism e-commerce platform based on cloud computing to realize modernization and uniformity of tourism e-commerce platforms. Simply speaking, we can build a platform for tourism information and resources with woeful functions of cloud computing.

3. Influence on global tourism industry

With the support from big data and cloud computing technologies, the tourism industry can integrate tourism-related data from police, transport, environmental protection, land & resources, urban-rural development, commerce, aviation, telecom, weather and other sources. At the same time, the industry can cooperate with major Internet search engines and tourism e-commerce carriers to establish tourism big data resources combining social data and data from tourism and other related authorities, carry forward digital tourism management and conduct digital marketing, thereby following the trend towards Internet, personalization and mass.