Tuesday 16 October 2007

NEW ONLINE BOOKING SYSTEM
Tasmanian tourism operators are set to benefit from a new digital marketing initiative introduced across Australia today.

Tourism Tasmania’s Chief Executive Officer, Felicia Mariani, has welcomed the announcement of an alliance between the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) and Vcubed Pty Ltd (V3), which delivers a new Internet-based booking exchange.

ATDW is owned by all the state and territory government tourism organisations and Tourism Australia.

It provides a central, electronic distribution and storage capability for the vast majority of Australian tourism product and destination information covering all Australian states and territories.

The information is currently distributed through the state and territory tourism web sites, Tourism Australia and 40 commercial distributors.

“The new partnership results in the provision of Australia’s first truly open booking exchange, called Tourism Exchange Australia (TXA),” Ms Mariani said.

Ms Mariani said the technology provides all tourism distributors, including travel agents and online publishers, with access to the tourism suppliers’ real-time price and availability and importantly, the opportunity for consumers to book directly with that supplier online or through the distributor of their choice.

Ms Mariani said benefits for consumers include high-quality content and imagery and the ability to purchase product found across state tourism authority and distributor websites quickly and safely, if desired.

“Benefits to industry include the exposure of their product to new markets and increased distribution opportunities.” Ms Mariani said.

“Importantly, the system is also open, inclusive and flexible enough to accommodate all distribution and booking models.

“For Tasmania it gives us the ability to provide state-based data and connections to third party distributors whom we work with and importantly, is consistent with Tourism Tasmania’s intentions to work with all electronic distribution providers and Tasmanian tourism operators within their own digital strategies as we further develop our own online marketing and distribution capabilities over the next twelve months.”

Tourism Tasmania will go to the market place within the next two months seeking ‘expressions of interest’ from technology providers to its requirements for online marketing and distribution systems, which are currently being finalised.

TXA links tourism providers with distributors, and is an industry-wide initiative of the State and Federal Governments covering accommodation, tours, attractions and events which will potentially benefit some 24,000 tourism and travel companies Australia-wide.

For further information contact Tourism Tasmania's Communications Unit

(03) 6230 8244
email mediainfo@tourism.tas.gov.au