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The tourism sector is one of the most important business sectors in Greece. The term “online travel agency” refers to the transfer to the Internet of all or part of the tourism services offered by a real travel agency. The purpose of this study was to discuss the role of the Internet as an important tool in the tourism industry by presenting the ways it is used in customer service. The study focuses on an online travel agency. The methodology of the study was based on the collection of secondary data, which was collected through articles in journals as well as through official web sites. Specifically, the study discussed the use of the Internet and its importance in the field of tourism, and presented and analyzed the features and functions of an online travel agency, focusing on the basic services of an online travel agency, the subsystem of the customers, the provider’s subsystem and the subsystem of the intermediaries. In addition, a standardized online travel agency system was presented and finally an online travel guide was analyzed. The study concluded that tourism marketing is a necessary tool to be used in the management of all tourism businesses in order to achieve the planned marketing goals.

The study reported in this paper explores consumers' experiences with technology-assisted service encounters by investigating the applicability of Mick and Fournier's paradoxes of technology adoption to the online travel agents' services scenario. In-depth interviews were conducted to explore consumers' experiences when using travel agents' online services and the results were compared to those of Mick and Fournier. The findings are similar, suggesting that when consumers adopt online technology they can simultaneously develop positive and negative attitudes. The findings of this study also suggest that the nature of some of the paradoxes experienced by consumers may depend on the industry (travel industry in this study) and the technology (the Internet in this study) being investigated; consumers can develop multiple attitudes towards certain source elements, resulting in existence of contradictory views and attitudes. In terms of Mick and Fournier's paradoxes, the findings of this study indicate that when consumers use technology assisted service encounters for travel agents' services they are most likely to experience control/chaos, freedom/enslavement, competence/incompetence, efficiency/ inefficiency, engaging/disengaging, assimilation/isolation paradoxes and least likely to experience the new/ obsolete paradox.