Hello World!

HelloBC.com welcomes the world (and the Olympics) to Super, Natural British Columbia

Athletes and sporting fans from around the world are coming to British Columbia (BC), home of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. Billions more will watch the games on TV and online to get a glimpse of beautiful BC. Before and after the festivities, thousands of travellers will choose to vacation in one of the most geographically and culturally diverse tourist destinations in the world. BC needed a way to reach out to these visitors, to communicate what it has to offer, and to make vacations easy to plan.

Prior to the announcement regarding the Olympics, Tourism British Columbia (TBC) had begun an initiative to develop a public-facing interface for a new system created to store a vast array of information on the provinces tourism operators (e.g. hotels). HelloBC.com was the online channel enabling TBC to communicate all it has to offer to travellers and to simplify vacation planning. When BC was chosen as the location for the 2010 Olympic Games the onus on the site became enormous.

The TBC eBusiness team had the vision and tourism industry knowledge to create a world-class site, but needed a partner with the technical ability, domain knowledge and methodology to pull it together. TBC and T4G embarked on this project together and found great success through a trusting relationship. The end result is a world-class tourism website equipped to capture the attention of the world.

Background

The province of British Columbia (BC) is large and offers a wide variety of experiences. It boasts bustling urban centres and quaint rural townships; breathtaking mountain ranges and an expansive coastal region. Getting around is never a problem as there are several forms of transportation. Travelers can relax in a large hotel or small bed & breakfast. They can ski, golf, fish, hike, bike, kayak and whale watch, etc, etc, etc. The provincial motto is "splendour without diminishment" and they mean it in BC. It is one of the most captivating places in the world.

Tourism is a $10-billion-a-year industry in British Columbia and Tourism British Columbia (TBC) is the provincial crown corporation in charge of promoting tourism. Its mandate is to attract travelers to BC and increase purchasing at hotels, restaurants, resorts, and any other business involved in tourism and hospitality.

The Challenge

The tourism industry is incredibly competitive, especially in tough economic times. TBC needed to present BCs expansive geographic and cultural diversity in such a way that travelers could easily research, plan, and book their vacations from the comfort of their homes. In this day and age, it is commonly known that the Internet is the most efficient way to communicate interactively with the masses. The issue then becomes: how do you create an attractive and scalable website that will present such a wide and diverse set of content?

TBC realized it needed a website:

TBC also needed to even the playing field between the large and small BC communities and tourism business operators. Larger tourism companies were investing in their own websites and marketing efforts; while the smaller companies were disadvantaged with little or no exposure on the web. Many of the smaller BC communities were similarly limited in their marketing capabilities due to budget restrictions, and had grown disparate when it came to tourism promotion.

There were plenty of stakeholders behind this solution, and ease-of-use and scalability were the watchwords for the projects ultimate success.

The Approach

TBC had a significant mission to accomplish and staff knew they couldnt go it alone. They needed a partner who knew Internet technology and who had methodologies that would allow the project to be implemented quickly and effectively. TBC had worked with T4G on previous projects, and through this experience, knew they would be a great fit for this initiative. "Right from the start we received good vibes from the T4G team that they knew and understood what we were after, both for the long-term and in the immediacy," said Rod Harris, TBCs President and CEO.

Throughout this project the T4G-TBC relationship was collaborative and frank. There was no "us" vs. "them". It was truly a team effort. Though T4G looked to TBC for the overall direction, the T4G team provided ideas to help further build the TBC vision. Over time, T4G was asked to contribute to the project in more areas such as design and analytics. This was due, in part, to the trust that had developed between the two parties. Through this relationship T4G was also trusted to help TBC prioritize the growing implementation list (i.e. what content features to add and how). When a good idea came up T4G would offer a technical perspective and an understanding of the systems capabilities and limitations. This helped TBC determine the feature details as well as trade-offs with respect to scope, time and budget.

To help expedite the project, elements of the overall solution were broken up into smaller releases. The first build was completed in 3 months. The goal was to get it into production with as many of the priority features as possible. The project continued on this path of smaller releases (1.5 4 months) in order to build and improve the features and functionality of the system and to respond quickly to changing needs and technologies.

T4G and TBC mutually agreed to limit the number of people involved in decision making in order to expedite the releases. A single path of communication was created (i.e. one designated person at T4G communicated with only one other designate at TBC). This greatly improved the level of organization with respect to communication and decision making during the project.

The Solution

TBC initiated the HelloBC.com project to provide travel information about BC, and to create a public interface for its new Destination Management System (DMS). DMS allows Tourism BC to manage all travel and tourism product information and provide accurate publication of that content through multiple channels including print material. It was built to replace manual, paper-based processes.

The initial launch of the HelloBC.com, in 2005, consisted of a web application built on Microsoft Content Management Server and Commerce Server which were customized by T4G. It included sophisticated administration workflows, tools, and processes for the optimization of the site. Its framework is easily extensible for future features and functionality. It includes thousands of pages, in multiple languages, that can be easily managed by a small number of people.

Since its initial delivery, the project has undergone many major functional releases. Some of the key functionality that has been delivered includes:

User-generated Content Through blog postings travellers can enter their experiences surrounding the many BC attractions, activities or accommodations.
Integration with Third-party External Web Frameworks Within their blog postings travellers can include their own multimedia content through integrated sites such as Flickr (images) and YouTube (video).
Reusable Content Management Extensions Augmenting out-of-the-box components with custom development to allow content to be reused easily throughout all of the sites.
Analytics and Reporting Providing metrics on site performance through the implementation of industry standards (Google Analytics and Omniture) and custom reporting.
Mapping Services Integration with Google and Microsoft MapPoint.
Custom Publishing Workflows Enabling TBCs content creation and publishing processes within the system through an automated, custom workflow (K2.Net technology).

These enhancements were made possible by the initial development of a robust framework upon which modular pieces could be added. "We knew that TBC was not simply looking to put up a tourism website," said T4G President Geoff Flood. "They wanted the best in the world; something complex enough to handle their needs but easy to use for both visitors and tourist operators to update content and other information. We always had that in mind. Wants and needs would grow and the site architecture would have to accommodate that."

This framework was also used to launch a duplicate series of HelloBC sites to target overseas visitors. At the time this case study was published seven country sites were available. The implementation of this piece, including automated integration with a translations firm, and content re-purposing among sites, was a great example of the solutions extensibility and ability to grow over time. It is also an example of how the system implementation allowed for extensible features without costly maintenance.

The project was delivered via a multidisciplinary T4G team in collaboration with TBC. T4Gs contributions included:

British Columbia now has a world-class online presence that is second-to-none. It has arrived just as the world prepares to cast its undivided attention on the province in February 2010.

The sites are receiving more than seven million hits a year and users have been complimentary. Following is some of the feedback about HelloBC.com.

• Content is easy to find, well organized and relevant.
• Site users feel more assured of what they are getting from tourism industry businesses.
• The site is a visual and fun experience with respect to the text, video, photos and blogging content. Users really get to experience BC even before arriving there.
• Site users are pleased to see multiple country/language sites targeted at several countries.

Tourism industry businesses and BC municipalities have also found the site to be of great value. Following are the benefits realized by these parties.

• HelloBC has given them an improved web presence.
• It increased their reach to potential customers.
• They now have a stronger partnership with the provincial tourism department.

All above items are also benefits to TBC given that their mandate is to support BCs tourism industry. Following are other benefits HelloBC.com has had to TBC.

• Improved relationships with the tourism industry businesses and BC communities.
• Distribution and management of information is much faster and easier than the previous paper-based system.
• Greater operational efficiency for the TBC eBusiness team.

As for T4G, the company has helped build another state-of-the-art tourism information system that prospective customers can see and touch. Through their involvement with this project the T4G Tourism and Hospitality Team has, once again, expanded its knowledge and expertise. But perhaps the biggest benefit was working closely with and developing a long-term relationship with a satisfied customer.

 

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