SOUTH WEST SELECTS AGILISYS FOR REGIONAL E-COMMERCE TOURISM PLATFORM
1st August 2006
Agilisys, EVIIVO and New Mind are to work with South West Tourism and nine Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) on an ambitious project to provide e-commerce capabilities to tourism SMEs in the South West of England.
Agilisys, the leading technology and business process services provider, today announces that it has been selected by the South West region (a partnership of South West Tourism, the official Regional Tourist Board for South West England, and nine DMOs, tourism organisations at county and local level), to deliver a wide ranging e-Business Platform to bring the benefits of e-commerce to the region's tourism business. Together with EVIIVO and New Mind, this investment will bring up to 7,000 businesses, such as guest houses, B&Bs, hotels and local attractions, online through a fully integrated regional solution.
Part of the solution will be to create a regional e-commerce hub using New Mind's innovative technology, through which DMOs, Tourist Information Centres, and local businesses can interface to take advantage of joint marketing and commercial opportunities. The solution also fully integrates with the national tourism network, EnglandNet, managed by VisitBritain, allowing marketing, accommodation, tour, attraction, and event searching to take place across a fully integrated technology platform at a local, regional and national level.
Another unique aspect is the EVIIVO frontdesk™ solution, which has been developed to give tourism businesses a low cost 'out of the box' e-commerce enabled website that can connect not only to regional tourism hubs and destination management systems, but also to the UK national tourism channel VisitBritain.com and other major travel portals. Features include a fully e-commerce enabled web-site, with an installation time of less than two hours, and the ability to add a 'book now' button to an existing website. All of this is underpinned by one single product database. VISIT Services Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of EVIIVO,will provide additional services such as user training as part of the three-year contract.
By bringing additional tourism businesses onto an integrated platform, the South West region aims to revolutionise its approach to tourism development, management and delivery by improving visitor access to quality and comprehensive information about the region and its destinations. EVIIVO frontdesk™ 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.
Robin Barker, Marketing Director of South West Tourism, says, "The web is now the preferred source of travel ideas and information for visitors to South West England, but to date there has been no comprehensive source of information and ideas for visitors to the region. In addition too many businesses - especially the smaller ones - have found it hard to put in place the websites and systems they need to take full advantage of the internet revolution. This development addresses both needs, with benefits to both visitors and business. It is a significant day in the region's tourism history!"
Charles Mindenhall, Agilisys CEO, comments, "We are delighted that the South West region has chosen to engage with Agilisys and partners in helping to deliver their ambitious vision of creating pan-regional access to relevant technologies and empowering small business such as B&Bs to take advantage of these opportunities. This follows another recent contract at ONE North East where we have begun to implement a similar solution to the one that is envisaged here. I believe our success reflects the considerable investment we have made in developing highly practical and commercially focused solutions for the UK tourism sector, and we look forward to achieving great things within the South West region."
Ian Griffin, EVIIVO's Chairman comments, "Agilisys has assembled one of the finest teams of UK tourism technology companies to deliver this solution for the South West region. The combined offering of EVIIVO and New Mind along with the support and training services offered by VISIT Services Limited will firmly position South West Tourism and its DMO partners as leaders in the adoption of tourism technology, that not only delivers to the visitor, but also provides an opportunity for the region's visitor economy to access and exploit a wide range of e-commerce services. This represents a significant milestone in South West region's push towards e-commerce enabling small and medium businesses in this core industry sector."
For further information:
Christine Grady
Agilisys
Tel: 0208-237-6111
Email: christine.grady@agilisys.co.uk
About Agilisys Ltd
Agilisys is the UK's most innovative IT and business process service provider, transforming the way our clients deliver services to their customers through the use of strategic, affordable, shared service platforms.
Working for both the public and private sector, we have earned a strong reputation and hold deep domain expertise within local government, travel and tourism, retail financial services and healthcare. Agilisys has over 1,000 employees in the UK, Ireland and India. (www.agilisys.co.uk)
About EVIIVO frontdesk
EVIIVO is a global licensor of software solutions headquartered in the UK. In a global setting we target National Tourism Offices and Destination Management Organisations as well as private sector partners. In a local UK setting we are focused on targeting accommodation, tours, attractions and event businesses with our revolutionary product, EVIIVO frontdesk™ (www.eviivo.com)
The EVIIVO frontdesk solution has been developed to give tourism businesses an extremely low cost 'out of the box' e-commerce enabled website that can connect not only to regional tourism hubs and Destination Management Systems, built by partner New Mind, but also to the UK national tourism channel VisitBritain.com and other major travel portals.
Its product is unique because it enables accommodation, tours, attractions and event businesses to create their own fully e-commerce enabled web site; manage yield and inventory for a number of distribution channels as well as other key aspects of their business in a single application.
About New Mind
New Mind specialises in delivering positive business results through innovative web design, inspirational on and off-line marketing campaigns, high performance database-driven e-commerce sites and sophisticated search engine optimisation techniques. They offer a fully integrated approach providing a range of marketing services from a single source. This strategy guarantees consistency of design, strong technical foundations and a marketing orientation throughout every project they undertake. (www.newmind.co.uk)
About VISIT Services
VISIT Services delivers customer-drive e-business solutions incorporating a fully web-enabled Destination Management System (DMS), project management services, training, customer care services, operational and technical support and the platform for specifying new developments to meet ongoing local market and business operation requirements. The partnership between VISIT Services and New Mind was formed in 2004 and brings together sector leading technology and first class customer service to provide an unbeatable solution to Tourist Operators in the UK.
About South West Tourism
South West Tourism is a partnership of private enterprise and both local and central government. We work to encourage the promotion and development of tourism in Bath, Bristol, Bournemouth/Poole, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire (including Cotswolds & Forest of Dean destinations) and Wiltshire.