www.ijmit.com International Journal of Management & Information Technology ISSN: 2278-5612 Volume 2, No 2, January, 2013 © Council for Innovative Research 1 | Page Using ICT to Enhance the Management of the Natural & Cultural Heritage Resources of Old Oyo National Park for E-Tourism Development Oladeji Sunday Oladipo 1 , Olabode Olatubosun 2 , Iwasokun Gabriel Babatunde 2 1 Dept. Ecotourism and Wildlife Management,Federal University of Technology, Akure Nigeria. 2 Dept. Computer Science, Federal University of Technology, Akure Nigeria. Abstract This paper describes the conceptualization of Old Oyo National Park seeking an intervention for improve collaboration and communication internally across functional and departmental boundaries through the use of ICT. Eighteen natural and cultural heritage resources of ecotourism values were indentified in the Park, in addition to the nine art and craft practiced in these communities and eight annual cultural events. A detail assessment of the level of development of the cultural and natural features in the Old Oyo National Park was carried out based on the three component of tourist destination, viz; attraction, amenities and accessibility. The gridded map of the locations of these ecotourism features was also presented. An e-tourism designed for the park has the basic component of catalog of product, shopping cart, and check out, payment gateway (payment processing network), customer account, internet merchant account and business account. Customers can browse the catalog of tourism product and shops cart it. The gateway component accepts credit card details and sends to the payment gateway for authorization on the premise of adequate security using the SSL primitives. Funds are reserved into the customer account and later transfer to merchant account, and then to the business account of the park. Keywords: Old Oyo National Park, tourism, culture, heritage, e- commerce, 1. INTRODUCTION The study of e-commerce in the tourism industry has emerged as a frontier area for information technology. E-commerce as defined in Turban, Lee, King & Chung, (2000); Bocij, Greasley and Hickie (2008) is the process of buying and selling or exchanging products, services and information via computer networks including the Internet. Tourism and e-commerce consists primarily of the distributing, buying, selling, marketing and servicing of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. It can sometimes involve electronic funds transfer (Donal, Michael & Hitesh, 2001), supply chain management, e-marketing, online marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), automated inventory management systems and automated data collection systems (Popescu Delia 2007). It typically uses electronic communication technology such as the Internet, extranet, e-mail, e-books, database, and mobile phones. The emergence of the Internet as a tool for the business-to-consumer aspect of e-commerce has far reaching ramifications. Most importantly, it has created opportunities for businesses to reach out to consumers in a very direct way and create electronic markets (Inge M. Kloppiing & Earl McKinney 2004). Generally as presented in Deepthi (2008), the revolution in ICTs has profound implications for economic and social development. It has pervaded every aspect of human life whether it is health, education, economics, governance, entertainment etc. Dissemination, propagation and accessibility of these technologies are viewed to be integral to a country’s development strategy. The most important benefit associated with the access to the new technologies is the increase in the supply of information. Secondly it reduces the cost of production. Thirdly it has overcome the constraints of distance and geography and fourthly it has led to more transparency (Deepthi 2008). The government of Nigeria is poised at integrating ICTs to all sectors and developmental activity. Tourism is one such potential areas. Tourism is now being considered as the World’s largest industry Nigerian Tourism Development Master Plan, (NTDMP, 2006). Besides export earnings, international tourism generates an increasingly significant share of government (national and local) tax revenues throughout the World. In addition, the development of tourism as a whole is usually accompanied by considerable investments in infrastructure such as airports, roads, water and sewage facilities, telecommunications and other public utilities. Such infrastructural improvements not only generate economic benefits to tourists but can also contribute to improving the living conditions of the local populations (Frederico, 2003). Old Oyo National Park like any other National Park in the World is a protected area with abundant natural resources of immensurable socio-economic, cultural and ecological values. Most protected areas in Nigeria are endowed with natural and cultural resources that if develop could support other tourism activities such as the development of cultural tourism, heritage tourism, cultural heritage tourism, creative tourism, agrotourism, aquatourism and other ecological tourism activities like game viewing, bird watching, Adventure/wilderness experience, Sport fishing tourism (Ormsby and Mannle 2006). However, these values may be elusive if handled or treated with impunity, indiscriminate and non-challant attitude. It is recorded in Oladeji et. al, (2011), that the ongoing effort at involving community in the management of natural resources in protected areas will go a long way towards achieving sustainable management of these resources thus ensure maximum benefits derivable. These desirable benefits could also be appreciated if information communication technology (ICT) is employed in the management. Many research scholars ( Ayodele 1988, Fadare 1989, Falade 1993, Adeyemo, 1993, Afolayan et. al. 1996, Adetoro 2002 and Alarape 2001) had carried out studies on Old Oyo National Park since its inception as Upper Ogun Game reserves and National Park in 1991. The results findings had provided useful information on the ecological resources of the Park. Passage of time therefore has made it necessary for the appraisal, review, modification and update of some of the management tools and data generated in line with the current global practices in natural resources management and