This book is the proceedings of the ENTER2006 Conference that was held in Lausanne, Switzerland in January 2006. The book contains 40 full papers and 23 extended abstracts that were written by authors from about 20 countries. As a whole, the book meets its target aims and objectives well for disseminating the most updated technological research findings in the context of tourism. In addition, the new knowledge that the book contains largely contributes to inspire new thoughts on the integration of technologies and tourism, representing two of the world's fastest growing industries. To this author, the book is a milestone in the area of technology applications to tourism, and there does not exist any comparable book other the proceedings of the previous ENTER conferences.
All published papers had gone through a two‐level reviewing process. As such, the book's overall quality is assured. While the full papers present research findings and conceptual frameworks, the extended abstracts review work‐in‐progress. In general, appropriate literature is referred to in the full papers, making readers aware of the relevant work. A noticeable gap of book is the inconsistent presentation style of different papers and the dominance of European experiences but such a gap is expected in conference proceedings.
The book is generally readable but readers need to have certain prior knowledge to understand the technical details presented in some papers. In summary, this is an excellent reference for researchers, educators, postgraduate students, policy makers, and industrial practitioners to appreciate new ideas and developments in the subject area. The book, however, is not a suitable textbook for classroom use, and it is not meant to serve that purpose. Lastly, the book is not inexpensive but considering its wide scope of coverage and significant international collaboration efforts, it is not unreasonably priced.
