The UK tourist industry is upgrading its e-commerce capability in a bid to increase the popularity with the South East region and attract additional investment into the region.

Agilisys and Evivo are launching EVIIVOfrontdesk to give tourism businesses an ‘out of the box’ e-commerce enabled website that can connect to the UK national tourism channel VisitBritain.com, the equivalent regional sites like visitsoutheastengland.com and travel portals such as lastminute.com. In addition, it does not preclude hoteliers from using travel consolidators, and allows them to manage allocations in one place. 

Recent research conducted by VisitBritain shows that 50% of people now use the Internet when choosing a holiday.

EVIIVOfrontdesk features include an up and running e-commerce enabled web-site in under two hours and the ability to add a ‘book now’ button to an existing website. EVIIVOfrontdesk also allows businesses to pick and choose which sales channels they want to use including local destination websites, regional websites or national sites such as VisitBritain.com.

Small accommodation providers in the UK tourism market will be able to harness the power of the web by creating their own fully e-commerce enabled web site with minimal upfront investment and low ongoing costs.

EVIIVOfrontdesk is also a business management tool for owner managers, reducing their reliance on paper records by electronically recording all bookings. This is expected to increase the overall efficiency of tourism businesses in the region and improve customer service.

Charles Mindenhall, Agilisys CEO adds “By delivering EVIIVOfrontdesk as a shared service for the UK tourism industry, consumers can now view and book from a much wider pool of attractions and accommodation, without having to send cheques in the post or disclose credit card details over the phone.  EVIIVOfrontdesk is also a fully integrated management system which puts business owners in total control.”

Bob Collier, Managing Director of Tourism South East comments “Tourism South East is permanently looking to improve the way in which tourism providers in the south east are supported. In EVIIVOfrontdesk we believe we are offering a genuinely compelling product to our members that will help them to generate increased business and to help them compete with larger international businesses on an equal footing.”
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