STB/MDA Call for Proposals - Interactive Digital Media R&D ...

STB/MDA
Call for Proposals – Tourism
Content Platform
March 2011
CONFIDENTIAL

Background on STB
• The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is the country’s leading
economic development agency in tourism, one of Singapore’s key
service sectors. Known for forging partnerships, driving innovation
and ensuring excellence, the Board champions tourism and builds it
into a key economic driver for Singapore. Together with its tourism
promotion functions, it also fulfils a much broader economic
development role for the tourism sector.
• Headquartered in Singapore, STB’s also has regional offices in key
regions such as Asean, North Asia, Oceania, Europe and the
Americas, with expanded resources to capitalise on growth markets
like China and India.
• The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has been driving technological
innovation and adoption in the local tourism industry by supporting
the R&D and implementation of innovative technology projects which
either enhance visitors’ experience or value add to tourism
enterprises.
• This is in-line with one of the key directions of the Tourism2020 plan
which is to integrate technology into core functions of tourism
businesses to create new solutions, processes and experiences in
tourism.

Vision/Objectives for CFP
With the healthy tourism outlook and ever increasing numbers of visitors to
Singapore, it has become necessary to leverage on technology to provide new
services and products to the visitors.
With an increasing demand for tourism related media, there is a need for a
comprehensive reservoir of tourism content that is accessible to Tourism Partners
and Technology Companies. Without such content it is unlikely the demand of front
end products and services will be met as the barrier of creating the content t for such
products and services is too high for many and not sustainable for others.
The Tourism Content Platform (TCP) hopes to catalyze an ecosystem where
technology players find it easy to create new applications for the tourism industry
tourism players can leverage on these applications to enhance visitors' experience.
The Tourism Content Platform aggregates content which provides the building
block for innovative applications to be created.
Key Objectives of TCP
– Help in catalyzing the creation of more innovative services and applications
for tourism
– Boost the adoption of technology by the tourism industry

Call for Proposals
• To support the development of the tourism industry, STB will be partnering MDA/IDMPO
to jointly call for proposals for an innovative content aggregation service and management
platform that will help catalyse further development of tourism related applications and
services. These proposals should be aimed at developing new content aggregation
business models with a content management infrastructure for supporting
commercialization efforts of tourism applications and services.
• Which are you looking at for your Call for Proposal
- Creation of the infrastructure platform to pull together content related to tourism
(includes images, write ups, videos and audio content of tourism
locations/establishments) and offer them from a centralized source.
- This centralised platform brings together both existing content and newly developed
content that allows re-purposing into various visitor facing applications (eg. mobile
device, website, etc) by technology companies for tourism enterprises
- Existing content include those owned by STB or owned by existing content
creators
- New content to be created could include multilingual audio commentary that
currently does not exist.
- By aggregating the content, it allows for tiered pricing of the content hosted on a
single platform. This platform can then be promoted to technology companies to
leverage on so as to create new applications from it.

CFP for Tourism Content Platform
Tourism Content Platform Requirements
The intent of this call is to aggregate g STB and private sector content onto a single platform
and catalyze a workable business model that enables content to be updated and new content
to be developed by the private sector. Interested companies are welcome to submit proposals
which should include:
• The business plan on how content is to be aggregated and updated within the platform,
as well as utilized.
• The creation of a infrastructure platform to pull together content related to tourism
(includes images, write ups, videos and audio content of tourism
locations/establishments) and offer them from a centralized source.
• This infrastructure should ideally be hosted on a cloud solution.
• This infrastructure should also be able to host content to be deployable onto various frontend
applications.
• The infrastructure should have a payment gateway for purchase of content
• The creation of a content t management application which h is able to index, search, tier
content and manage Intellectual Property (IP) rights of the content.
• Timelines, key project milestones and estimated cost of project implementation. The
proposal should include a prototype phase which would test basic assumptions on the
proposed p concept and evolve the concept appropriately.
p

Offerings by STB/MDA
FUNDING
Co-funding of up to 50% of qualifying cost
which includes
• Professional Costs
• Software Development
• Design cost
• Hardware & Software required
• Content Licensing & Biz Development
Market Access
• Facilitation to reach out to tourism industry
stakeholders. e.g. Facilitating an industry education
event for TCP
• Involvement of STB’s regional offices to raise
awareness of TCP
• Access to MDA IDM testbeds and common
services

Offerings by STB/MDA
Promotion
STB provides support and promotion for TCP as the
definitive source for Singapore Tourism content in our
industry events and 1-11 engagements
Promotion through MDA i.JAM and other networking
events
Digital Reach
Links and/or banners on the following STB owned
websites
•STB official website: www.stb.gov.sg
•STB visitor website: www,yoursingapore.com
•STB Digital Library :digitallibrary.yoursingapore.com
Partners
• Strong partnerships with key government agencies
and MDA demand drivers.
• extend reach and leverage on existing enablers.
e.g. directory listing from IDA Digital Concierge
program

Timeline (tentative)
DATE
DESCRIPTION
7 Mar to 31 Mar 2011 Period of Call
1 Apr to 15 Apr 2011 Evaluation of Proposals
18 Apr to 22 Apr 2011 Follow-up interviews with potential companies
25 Mar to 29 Mar 2011 Final Evaluation Phase
2 May 2011 Appointment of companies