The Caribbean for many is the dream holiday destination. It's also a remarkably complex tourism product, comprising 34 country destinations, themselves spread over more than a thousand islands. And all this means different things to different people.
For Americans it's a short weekend hop from Miami to the Bahamas to enjoy a spot of gambling, shopping and nightlife. For the British, Barbados by Concorde is the ultimate in luxury. Germans are likely to enjoy the party atmosphere of the Domincan Republic. Divers flock to the world-class dive sites of the Cayman Islands, and independent travellers are drawn to the culture of Cuba and the eco-tourism from Suriname to St Kitts & Nevis. And that barely scratches the surface.
In late 2000 the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) wanted to make the most of the web to communicate all this diversity, culture and colour, and to help its member countries (especially the smaller ones) compete on an even footing with better-funded tourism destinations around the world and increase their own market share.
DOT helped CTO shape a strategy designed to maximise visibility for each of the 34 destinations, and to capture market share for special interest visitors using the web to research their holidays.
We designed a network of internet 'Gateways' to the Caribbean. Each a mini-portal offering an overview of a particular destination or special interest activity, linking directly to detailed information and booking links on the national web sites of the member countries themselves.
www.caribbean.co.uk is the UK portal. Information is localised for the origin market, so travel agent and air carrier listings, Visa requirements and currency conversion tools are specific to the needs of UK travellers. Everything on each of the 34 destination Gateways and 25 special interest activity Gateways is mirrored and localised for the French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and German markets.
This huge and complex network of sites is powered by our easy-to-use content management system, administered over the web by regional CTO editors around the world working with the support and supervision of a webmaster in New York. This way, travel agent directories (for example) for the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Holland and Italy can be maintained by the local offices, and system-wide changes and upgrades remain under the control of the webmaster. Each localised version can have its own visual identity to tie in with origin country marketing initiatives.
Other innovations include an XML-driven six-language interactive map and a suite of useful tools (currency converter, weather forecast, travel agent finder, etc) designed to make planning and booking a Caribbean holiday a breeze. Further developments are being synchronised with development of our work on the CTO Intranet (to be formally launched at Caribbean week in New York late May 2002).
In many cases, the applications we develop for the public-facing Gateways can be shared in a different 'flavour' with the members-only site. This 'develop once, use many' philosophy means that we can deliver CTO's information customised to the needs of a range of audiences and individuals in print, on mobile devices, on CDROMs and presentations and on the web - all from the same original data.
Many developments are scheduled for the coming months including an accommodation finder and viral marketing initiatives. Our ongoing relationship with the CTO, our work on the Gateways project and the CTO Intranet have given us a remarkable breadth and depth of knowledge in tourism marketing.
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