An online marketing, booking and information system for Wales is set to significantly boost the economic power of the Welsh tourism industry.The Wales Tourist Board today announced that Wales’ tourism industry would receive a significant boost with the development of an online Destination Management System, or DMS. The £2.3 million, three-year project will deliver an online source of information about the country’s tourism resources that will include information on accommodation, real-time availability of that accommodation, visitor attractions across Wales, activities and events. All this will be marketed on a global platform using the Internet.
Tourism businesses will also have the option to allow potential customers to make an online booking through the DMS, and visitors accessing the website www.visitwales.com will also be able to access dynamic maps showing up to date information on things such as events taking place on any given date within a five-mile radius of their destination. Participation in all aspect of the DMS will be free to tourism businesses in Wales for the first year.
Jonathan Jones, chief executive of the Wales Tourist Board said that the DMS would help raise Wales’ profile globally, and augment the existing marketing capability of the country’s tourism industry.
“A study last week by the UK’s leading Internet research company, Jupiter MMXI, showed that the number of people logging on to travel internet sites in Britain had increased by 1 million over the past six months to four million. If our tourism industry is to flourish, we have to ensure that Wales is in a position to respond to the changing ways tourists are accessing holiday ideas, and information on their potential destinations. “The DMS system will ensure that we are securely placed to capitalise on the increasingly sophisticated behavioural patterns of customers,” Mr Jones said The DMS will be developed over the forthcoming eight months, in close consultation with the Welsh tourism industry. A contact centre, which will be able to respond to email, telephone and fax enquiries is scheduled to be up and running for January 2002, and the website (www.visitwales.com) will be equipped with the DMS’s full functionality by March 2002. The DMS will be developed for the Wales tourism industry by Australian-based company Travel.World.Net, in a contract worth £900,000. World.Net previously developed similar destination software for the Australian Tourist Commission.
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