First of all, tourism information will be found even better by search engines because of authoritative linking from Wikipedia. Furthermore, the quality of tourism information will improve because of Wikipedia's very careful quality control, its international network and extensive resources for localization and translations. Reusing content from travel guides, especially images , will also make Wikipedia pages more relevant and fun.
In summary, Wikivoyage offers an interesting new channel for institutions in the tourism sector. Museums, booking offices, hotels etc. can reach a huge target group of travellers with Wikivoyage, who are specifically looking for tourist entertainment for a specific destination. And unlike Wikipedia, there are links to the websites of commercial providers, which is positive for visitor conversion.
Risks surrounding commercial interests
Of course, the tension with the commercial providers in this sector is intriguing. Because Wikipedia, as a leading list to data community platform, has strict rules regarding (commercial) interests. In principle, the information in Wikivoyage is not neutral in position, but the interests of various providers must be served 'equally'. If these interests are not managed properly, the content will be curbed and information will be deleted instead of added. What we do not want is tour boats that shamelessly promote their trade, but we do want to know which parties there are and which option is suitable for your holiday trip.
tour boat
Source: wikipedia.org.
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Threats to travel guide publishers
And what about travel guide publishers like Lonely Planet ? Publishers of tourist information will see that creating tourist content can be done cheaper and faster by the public and stakeholders.
But that has been possible for a while, after all, how many blogs are there about travel? The secret until 2012 was in the curation, selecting which information is good or bad. Now Wikipedia is going to tackle that part, namely the quality control. What remains for travel guides is appreciation and opinion (what is really fun, or suitable for whom?) and the marketing channel that the publishers have. But is that enough to maintain their market position?
travel guides2
On the other hand, a lot of useful information is also available to those parties in many languages and the question is whether they can take advantage of this. For example, by serving small niche markets more efficiently and by being able to offer customized travel information through personalization.
Even more potential due to wiki data projects
Especially now that the heritage sector and the Dutch government are rapidly releasing open data suitable for tourism, this offers excellent opportunities. The information on Wikipedia is freely reusable, so that also offers opportunities for third parties to reuse this information in new (tourism) apps. At first glance a threat to travel guides, but again an opportunity to expand their content database for free and to localize it for the various target groups.
In short, Wikivoyage is bringing an exciting change to the tourism industry. One thing is for sure: it will become easier to travel the world, while making money with tourist information will become harder again.