O. Fodor, Econsulting, Bratislava I. Smolák, Siemens PSE, Bratislava

European Tourism Destination Portal

Hradec Králové, 3.-4.4. 2006

Visiteurope.com Background & History

Services Technical Architecture Operation Concepts for new cooperations Future vision

Content

• The aim of the EU Commission funded 'European Tourism Destinations (ETD) Portal' is to develop an unique access point under European Travel Commission (ETC) owned URL www.VisitEurope.com to promote European destinations.

• The portal will address needs of both tourists originating form outside and within Europe. For the tourists, it must contribute to make European destinations more attractive and desirable.

Aim of the portal

• A unique access point to all NTO web sites with common user interface in En, Fr, Ge, It, Sp and Pt for better visibility and quicker search to select the most suitable information

• Pan European joint content and content from NTOs

• Drive more traffic to NTO sites

• Joint strong marketing of one access point

• Architecture for further ICT developments (mobile, B2B, Intranet..)

Main objectives

A result of a political will of Commission with Council Resolution in May 2002 `to reflect to strengthen position of Europe as a destination by using ICT´

Tourism Advisory Committee (TAC) & EC/DG ENTR:

Tourism Unit Action Plan ´Modern online public services´ adopted by the EU Council as part of the eEurope Action plan, June 2002

A tender of the program Interchange of Data between Administrations, June 2003

Steps to the project

Places•Access to National Web sites

•Search cities, etc

Create an attractive, efficient doorway...

Experiences•Search for Culture, Adventure, Events, etc

Practical Help•Travel planning, Money, Security, etc

The Portal – What is it?

Portal responsibilities

Agree Business

Plan

E-Commerce Competency Center

2-stage contract (€2m)

European Commission

Agree Portal specification

via EC Portal Steering Group

ETC member countries

• EC3, Vienna• Siemens, Vienna & Bratislava• Tiscover, Innsbruck• Lixto, Vienna• ITC-irst, Trento

                                                  

The consortium

Delivery in 7 languages, adaptable to different world markets :

– 1st Phase : US (English), Canada (English & French) & Brazil (Portuguese)

– 2nd Phase : Latin America (Spanish) China (Traditional Chinese), Japan (Japanese), Russia (Russian)

– 3rd Phase : Possible Hispanic, simplified Chinese, Global versions for English…

Support richer content and more ‘experiential’ imagery– Experience section for pan European offers on various themes

among which Culture, Nature or Activities… Access to NTO data, e.g., events

– Most relevant events in Europe… Intelligent search and innovative ‘recommendation’

services … and other services such as flights search, weather

reports, etc

More services for customers

Selection of portal services

Sitemap ETD Portal

Home Experience Where To Go AccommodationHow to Travel

Useful Information

Virtual Europe

Tools Directory

Countries

Cities

Pan European Regions

By Plane

By Train

By Car

By Boat / Ship

Image Galleries

Livecams

eCards

Search

Travel Planner

Yellow Pages

Weather & Climate

Newsletters

Currency Converter

Calendar

Downloads

• Introductory Text

• Map• 2-3 current

reports• NTO ListLink• Flash Slide-

Show• Banners• Hot Deals• Top 5 events• Newsletter

registration• Currency

Converter• Weather &

Climate• Access to Travel

Planner• Quick Poll

Countries • Accommodation Categories

• Airport• Bank and Public

Holidays• Blood Alcohol

Concentration Limit for Drivers

• Camping & Caravanning

• Climate• Credit Cards• Crime Rate• Currency, Foreign

Exchange• Customs

Regulations• Drinking Age• Electricity• Emergency #• European

Languages• Food & Drink• Gas• Gifts to Buy• Health Tips &

Medical Aid• Motor Vehicle

Regulations• National Recipes• Opening Hours• Pet Imports• Postal Service &

Telephone • Speed Limits• Tap Water Quality • Taxes• Time Zone• Tipping Tradition• Toll Sticker

Activities

Nature

Culture

Events

Routes To Explore

Special For

Site Map Search Feedback FAQ Credits About ETC

Copyright Imprint

Innovation• Quality informations

• well structured - rich (networked) – focused

• Directory system (manually/semi-automatically maintained)

• Domain focused search engine (working in preset pool of info sources)

• Semantic extensions (reasoning over search results based on domain ontology)

• Recommendation engines (advanced algorithms, suggesting items of interests)

• SEO (improving visibility of the portal)

Lixto - rapidly creation of services with automated processed data from web

from any Web site,

personalized,

in real-time,

automatically,

and deliver data on visiteurope.com

Data extraction with Lixto

Flight search

ExternalData

Sources

NTOData

Sources

ContentFeeder

CMS

Portal Software

(Java, J2EE, Red Hat)

Portal architecture

Software packages of the ETD portal

Web Server + Servlet ContainerTomcat 5.x

PostgreSQL

RedHat CCM 6.1(WAF + CMS)

Hibernate

Spring Framework

Apache Commons Library

Apache Lucene

Operating System(Red Hat Linux)

Java 2 Enterprise Edition

ETD Portal services

Lixto technologies

Harmonise

Trip@dvice

Three pillars of portal operations

Marketing

ETD Portal

AdministrationContent

Three pillars of portal operations

• Administration• Operational (management)• Technical (HW & SW)

• Content• NTO and ETC contribution• other resources

• Marketing• eMarketing (sponsors, banners)• Traffic management (bringing traffic to the portal,

e.g. domain networking, SEO, classical marketing activities, … )

Focus at Europe

• Pan-European region (new tourism marketing brands)

• European experience (cross-border attractions, interests)

• Allowing countries to freely unite (creating tourist unions in Europe)

Playground for cooperations

• co-opetition on all levels

Infrastructure layer

Process layer

Business layer

Subsites

• Dedicated for specific needs of Countries, Regions and other domain partners

• loose integration of subsites with local portals

•New chances for European Regions

… and the Future 

• First universal access point into the electronic tourism domain

• Hub in the eTourism network• not only European …

• major tourism portals worldwide (NTOs privileged)• creation of virtual organizations ?

• Collaboration (co-opetition)• content level• service level

… and the Future

• Integration of GIS• projection of entire portal content on geographic

coordinates

• => Mobile based services• Recommendations based on current position of the

tourist• Projection on electronic maps used in GPSdevice• Local travel bag• Enhanced marketing of tourism services (e.g. via

SMS)

… and the Future

• Platform for publishing in “exotic” languages

• for those countries, that do not have local support

• Directly integrated support for translation services

• optimising effort and publishing time• reducing costs• serving

• internal administrators• internet visitors

Thank you for your attention !

Oliver FodorEConsulting/EC3fodor@econsulting.sk

Ivan SmolákSiemens PSEivan.smolak@siemens.com