At an IT-in-tourism conference here techies pondered ways IT could make holidays more pleasurable and stress-free. "Even the smallest in the hospitality industry can benefit substantially from the Internet," said GoaCom manager Aarti Mulgaonkar, whose Web site offers a reservation system for hotels wanting to lure guests from across the globe.

"When we first introduced computers in our flagship restaurant at Dona Alcina in 1995, there was a lot of resentment from the staff. They were complaining of delays in printing KOTs (kitchen order tickets)," said Mr Charles Bonifacio, the CEO of the local Alfran group.

But soon, he said, the staff realised that their workload had reduced and accuracy levels had gone up. "When we opened a new restaurant a couple of years later, the staff insisted on installing computers," he added.

Bonifacio narrated how computers were allowing hotels to get reports of every menu item sold from the PoS (point of sale) system on a daily basis.

Least-paying and very popular items could, therefore, be identified with the tap of a key.Computers were also helping in menu engineering, he said.

But this is still just scratching the surface. IT could revolutionise everything in tourism and the hospitality trade, right from making the process of getting visas hassle-free to providing instant bookings for hotel rooms in distant places, the participants said.

"A lot needs to be done on the aspect of making passport and visa formalities more transparent using the Net and IT," said Mr Rajesh R Shastry of IMRglobal Ltd, based in the Santa Cruz Export Promotion Zone in Mumbai.

He spoke of the need for more use of IT in aspects that affect international tourists like remitting money in India, customs regulations and medical insurance.

Even big hotels in Goa don't accept online reservations, many speakers noted. They also complained that hotels in prominent destinations took as long as five days to reply to e-mail.

Mr Prakash Advani, the CEO of the Mumbai-based Web site freeos.com, said free operating systems like Linux can help the hospitality sector as it could cope with high volume of very critical data. It can help as a file-and-print service and promises reliability and stability for months and years, he added."IT allows me to configure my holiday exactly in the manner I want it," said Mr Nilesh Borde of the government college in Khandola. "I can check which hotel gives me the best deal in Shimla from among the 375 hotels available there," he added, explaining how IT can enable the tourist to grab the best deal.