What is Tour Operator

Virtual travel organizations, one of the most effective actors of tourism marketing, use information technology-based systems in parallel with the increasing use of information technologies. The competition in the tourism industries pushes virtual travel organizations to remain dynamic. Thus, customers can demand affordable and qualified tourism products. For this reason, it is inevitable for virtual travel organizations to use information technologies, in order to meet customers' demands efficiently and cost-effectively. Due to its nature, tourism products cannot be experienced before the sale. In order to analyze the expectations of the tourism customers, big-data-related technologies are valuable assets to the virtual travel organizations. From this point of view, managing massive data generated by tourism consumers is vital for the tourism supply chain. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no study relating big data and virtual travel organizations. In this chapter, the importance of five key concepts of big data have been discussed in terms of virtual travel organizations.