Christiana Koliouska

E-tourism refers to the broader integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the tourism sector and infrastructure. In this context, tourists can choose the travel destination, use price comparison sites and buy online tickets at low prices, while tourism entrepreneurs enhance their marketing strategies in response to the increasing demands of modern tourism Over the last few decades, alternative tourism has gained considerable interest among tourists and enterprises in the tourism industry. At the same time, it acts as an enabler and a facilitator of sustainable development. This paper presents an overview of the current situation of content characteristics of the websites of enterprises involved with alternative tourism services in Greece. The websites are evaluated according to 30 characteristics through multicriteria method. Furthermore, the final ranking of websites is presented to identify the most successful strategies, as well as the website that need improvements. According to the results, an e-tourism website model is suggested for the entrepreneurs to exploit the opportunities that arise in the digitalization transformation of the tourism industry.

Alternative tourism has gained considerable interest among consumers and enterprises in the tourism sector, creating new opportunities for providing high quality and innovative tourist services, while contributing to sustainable development. The Internet plays a key role as a tool for promoting alternative tourism. Motivated by this, this article presents an original research on the evaluation of the content features of the websites of enterprises involved with alternative tourism services in the region of Chania, Greece. The sample consists of 28 websites evaluated over 11 performance criteria through the ELECTRE III multicriteria method. The websites are ranked in a benchmarking context and the results of the evaluation are used to identify the most successful practices, as well as the website features that require improvements for the enterprises to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in the new era of technological innovation in the tourism sector.

As a global actor, the European Union (EU) plays a leading role in international efforts to promote sustainable development globally. All sustainable objectives and targets need Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as key catalysts, since ICTs constitute tools of unprecedented power which help people to face the growing challenges of rising population, poverty, epidemics and climate change. Policy makers in the EU are increasingly putting ICTs into relations with sustainable regional development. This paper aims to study and assess the impact of ICT on the EU regional policy in terms of sustainable development by applying the multicriteria approach, PROMETHEE II, using the software Visual PROMETHEE. The criteria that were used in this research are the criteria that both the European Commission and member states define to assess the ICT implications of new EU legislation since 2010. The results revealed that the impact of ICT on EU sustainable regional policy has gotten stronger in the last two decades.

Sustainability constitutes a broad discipline that focuses on the social, economic and environmental impact of human activities. Many policies and strategies have been developed for the pursuit of environmental sustainability and the guidance to a green society. Many enterprises have taken meaningful steps to improve their own environmental performance through corporate sustainability and environmental management. Environmental management contributes to significant improvements to environmental performance of the enterprises. This paper aims to evaluate the Renewable Energy Enterprises performance in the Internet in Thessaloniki Prefecture regarding the characteristics of sustainability using Multi-criteria Decision Analysis. TOPSIS method was used to provide a ranking of the Renewable Energy Enterprises according to their sustainability and finally conclude to a benchmark. According to the results of the research, the Renewable Energy Enterprises achieve a good level of sustainability but not the optimum. However, the entrepreneurs should adopt modern environmental policy, sustainable marketing, green network framework and certified environmental management system in order to consider their enterprise sustainable.

Nowadays, effective use of internet provides an opportunity to identify successful practices and policies for innovative business models in order to promote regional development through agro-tourism. In Crete, agro-tourism entrepreneurs have developed commercial activities in the internet where customers and firms are linked up together in the exchange of agro-tourism services. This paper aims to assess 29 websites of commercial purpose within agro-tourism sector in Crete and rank them according to 13 content, design, navigation and e-commerce adoption criteria. Each criterion presence is studied and then all the websites were ranked according to these criteria using the multicriteria analysis method of PROMETHEE II (preference ranking organisation method for enrichment evaluation). Results confirm that internet adoption in agro-tourism sector in Crete is in satisfactory level. The findings lead to policy implications for agro-tourism firms' entrepreneurs to use internet technologies and social media as a powerful marketing tool.

The invasion of new technologies combined with the high cost for running shop force enterprises to search for new sales methods. Network applications and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) can help achieve e-commerce goals. In Greece, many enterprises in the agro-food and drink sectors are already present on the internet. This paper studies the adoption of e-commerce on websites that support e-commerce activities within the agro-food and drink sectors. Therefore, the paper aims to identify and evaluate their qualitative and quantitative content characteristics, rank them according to 6 content characteristics/criteria using the multicriteria method of PROMETHEE II and classify them in groups of similar adoption. The findings of this study reveal the rate of adoption of e-commerce in the sectors and can serve as a valuable model for the designers of websites that promote e-commerce activities within the wider areas of food and drinks