Internet impact on achieving competi-tive advantage (Case study: travel and tour agencies of Tehran)

Considering the nature of tourism, which working in it demands competing with all tour and travel agencies in the world, it is vital for travel agencies to achieve competitive advantage if they want to attract international tourists. In one hand, emergence of internet dramatically has changed competitive-ness advantage acquisition, and on the other hand, tourism industry is highly dependent to internet and information technology. In this research we study travel agencies of Tehran which their target market is German and French tourist. Since application of internet is done toward acquisition of competi-tiveness advantage through value chain, in this research 44 main components in form of 8 indexes, which include different usages of internet in value chain, are tested by a model from to. Case study is the methodology. Field and research information was used for data gathering. Reliability of ques-tionnaire in this research is obtained by experts' opinion and its validity is achieved by Chronbach Alpha. For testing components and indexes we used Willcoxcon test. The results of this study showed that there is a relation be-tween use of internet in value chain in Tehran travel agencies, which are ac-tive in attraction of German and French tourists, and competitive advantage acquisition through three strategies (cheap wholesale, differentiation, and concentration) has great effect to achieve.