E-tourism in England a strategy .pdf

6. Key roles in support of e-tourism development
As has been noted, significant work has already been undertaken in the development of
local destination management systems within England. There is therefore much information
and expertise already available. However, there is also a natural reluctance to re-invest and
to change business practices. If new systems are to be introduced successfully, the existing
players must be involved in the process, invited to contribute expertise and offered solutions
which fit existing frameworks.
Whilst there will be opportunities for commercially sustainable e-commerce developments
once EnglandNet is in place, a substantial part of the e-tourism agenda has wider, strategic
objectives - ie to enhance industry performance through the provision of widely-accessible
services that do not directly generate income. There is therefore a strong case for public
funding to support the essential core elements of the system.
The EnglandNet project will be the cornerstone for delivering the aims of the strategy,
providing the central operating framework and the focus for co-ordinated action at regional
and local level. This needs to be complemented by efforts to raise awareness and skills
amongst tourism providers, especially the smaller businesses, to be able to take full
advantage of electronic marketing and e-commerce.
6.1 EnglandNet
The fundamental aim of EnglandNet is to enable ‘one-stop-shopping’ for all England’s
tourism products. To achieve this, the project will pursue the following key objectives:
• Create a national interoperability standard and infrastructure for England to connect
existing regional and local tourism information systems
• Provide a secure and effective communication network for ETC and RTBs
• Ensure that all destinations are able to adopt viable DMS services
• Deliver high quality data to meet the service requirements of the BTA, ETC, RTBs and
other organisations concerned with tourism at national and local level
• Offer an end-to-end booking service to end consumers and re-sellers.
The products of EnglandNet are therefore of three types:
Community Building Services: These will enable RTBs, DMO/TICS, ETC, BTA to promote the
development of communities of travellers, traders, suppliers, providers via for forums etc
which will encourage greater use of the other services offered by RTBs, DMO/TICs, ETC,
BTA. The first example of a community service is the ENTICE TIC extranet.
Content Management System (CMS) services: This will enable BTA, ETC, RTBs, to acquire,
edit and publish tourism information for marketing. Data for the CMS will be acquired via
web forms and from online connections to DMSs operated by DMO/TICs and RTBs. The
CMS will also be used to support the community services.
E-commerce Services: This will enable end-consumers and re-sellers to access the whole
SME tourism product of England, search, book, and pay for it through a single application
such as VisitBritain or TravelEngland. This will require EnglandNet infrastructure to
interoperate with the DMSs operated by RTBs and DMO/TICs. Interoperability must
therefore be developed for:
21/44 A strategy for modernising English tourism through e-business – July 2002