Tourism and Community Informatics

This article examines the role that information and communication technologies (ICT) play in influ-encing the shape and nature of local economic development. It is argued that the emerging field of community informatics (CI) can add an important dimension to our attempts to cope with the com¬ ; plex issues that characterize the tourism and development nexus. A review of the literature on applied community informatics is presented and we review some of the reasons why attempts to empower local people through the web have often failed. We then outline the implementation of a CI strategy to support tourism and local economic development on the coast of Croatia to make a web-based virtual community of businesses and communities who are defining their own Internet presence through a process called "web-raising, " and the use of open-source web devel¬ ; opment software. We conclude with a reflection on the problems that face the sustainability of com¬ ; munity informatics projects.