Information service as applied to the tourist business

The article deals with the current issues of information and communication technologies and their tourist- industry application. Nowadays, tourist service activity is inconceivable without information resources and communication technologies, which serve to equip the consumer with e-information transmission and acquisition tools. The author identified the following information service aspects that are valuable for the tourist industry: information as a link for the activity in tourism and service provision; tourism information product consumers (tourists, travel agencies, hotels, restaurants, airlines, railway and nautical companies, car-rent firms, etc); information resources (accounting databases, data provided by transfer companies); information owners and information resources; information systems; reservation and sales systems; information processes such as, for example, registration procedures, information transmission procedures, information processing procedures, and top management decision-making procedures; information system and technology support and maintenance - software provision, technical, linguistic, legal and organizational resources to ensure the operation of computering machines, thesauri, as well as operational instructions and methodology. The research conducted by the author leads to the general conclusion that, the newly-evolved information service industry is to continue its development and technological improvement, which, in its turn, will facilitate operations in the sphere of tourism and will satisfy consumer demand more efficiently.