Tiscover, central Europe`s leading e-travel destination portal and management system, has appointed travel industry guru Dr. Karsten Kärcher as chief international business officer, as part of a bold plan for expansion across Europe.
His appointment reveals new strategic goals for Austria-based Tiscover. He will oversee the roll-out of the portal and destination management system (DMS) across Europe, targeted at tourist offices and destination marketing organisations, hotels and other travel providers in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, UK and France.
Kärcher joins Tiscover from UK media and communications group Telewest. He brings with him over 12 years` experience of high-level strategic management, and a research background in the international travel industry.
Said Tiscover CEO Arno Ebner: “Karsten perfectly completes our top-level team. Tiscover is an international pioneer at the forefront of tourism marketing and Karsten shares our vision of the market. He is recognised as an industry prophet who has accurately assessed the future of online tourism in Europe and the world.” Founded in 1991 by Tirol Werbung, the state-owned tourist board for the Tyrol region in Austria, Tiscover has become the leading tourism portal in Austria, Germany and Switzerland, with ?-sterreich Werbung (the Austrian Tourist Board) earlier this year adopting Tiscover as technology for its official e-travel portal.
Tiscover received over 134 million page impressions and 30 million visits last year. It has become one of the most powerful e-travel portals and destination management systems in Europe, attracting partnerships with market dominating ISPs T-Online, AOL and Compuserve, and inclusion on Microsoft`s Expedia.de, Travelchannel.de and Start.de. The system has been hailed as the most advanced destination management system in Europe by the influential IZT (Institut für Zukunftstechnologien) in Berlin. Tiscover chairman Josef Margreiter attributes the company`s success to Tiscover`s high quality content and leading-edge destination management technology. He said: “Tiscover provides tourist offices and travel providers with the industry`s leading distribution technology and a network which works for consumers.”
Tiscover has attracted widespread interest from tourist offices across Austria, Germany and Switzerland, and today covers over 3,200 tourist regions and towns. The portal features a daily guide to the best festivals and cultural events taking place across the countries.
The accommodation sector has embraced Tiscover as a powerful way to market product, with online booking for over 55,000 hotels and accommodation providers now available on Tiscover (Tiscover.com, Tiscover.at, Tiscover.de and Tiscover.ch). Tiscover`s destination management system also functions as a powerful standalone reservations management solution on an ASP basis, allowing leisure operators to manage every aspect of product sales and administration through one powerful integrated system.
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