Tourism and Hospitality Industries

[Jo Vincent]

Hotels, Transportation, Major Events - BI and Analytics across the industry

[Jo Vincent]

Details check out at check-in

Andrew Colley | September 02, 2008 | Australian IT

case study | Hamilton Island

IF you don't quite get your guest's name right at the check-in desk of most hotels, you needn't fear serious brand damage, but if you run a six-star operation, says Hamilton Island business intelligence chief Nathan Bowen, your guests will notice.

Hamilton Island staff have easy access to the details of celebrity guests
That's assuming the guests, who are often paying a heavy premium for rock-star service, are involved in the check-in process at all.
"Our new Hotel Qualia is a six-star operation, and if you get things like that wrong, the guests pick up on it.

"They're not as happy because they don't feel like the service is as personal," Bowen says.

A little more than two years ago, this and other problems in its direct marketing programs began to weigh on the minds of Hamilton Island Group's management team.

The resort group consulted data quality software specialist QAS and found that about 30 per cent of the information in its critical marketing databases was inaccurate or malformed.

It began investigating its check-in and booking procedures and found that staff under pressure to serve guests, many from non-English-speaking backgrounds, had difficulty including customer information in their systems accurately.

The problem was particularly acute when it came to addresses that the marketing departments needed to design promotions and create customer profiles.

The profiles were based on the amount of times customers visited the island and the sort of leisure activities they enjoyed, but they required accurate contact data to identify guests uniquely.

"You might get a plane that lands and have 200 people checking into one hotel and want to get them in as fast as possible.

" You may need to enter their registration details into the system after they've gone to their rooms, but when they write out their details their writing might be illegible," Bowen says.

About June 2006 the company was poised to install a new network and management platform, Bowen says.

That provided an opportunity to buy licences to deploy QAS Pro in its marketing department, he says.

The software verifies addresses against a database of Australian postal information that is updated regularly.

It allows booking and registration staff to test addresses against the database and obtain accurate information.

The cost of the software licences and the postal database subscription was less than $20,000, Bowen says.

The system was deployed smoothly but Bowen concedes it depends heavily on the skill of staff trained in eliciting information from guests diplomatically.

Bowen says errors in Hamilton's direct marketing campaigns have dropped to less than 3 per cent.

That means very little bounces back, regardless of the channel, and costs are reduced from repeat campaigns.

The check-in desk is the area most improved by the system.

"The biggest improvement is in the area of duplicate profiles. You can use it to merge profiles on check-in and check-out or at the registration point.

"As a result, we're not having three or four profiles for guests, especially for regular visitors.

" We have a better profile on them.

"We can look at their history and customise holidays for them," Bowen says.

THE PROBLEM
Inaccurate guest data was crippling Hamilton Island's marketing efforts.

THE PROCESS
The company deployed data quality software that could verify the accuracy of customer data.

THE RESULT
The marketing department reduced errors in its database from in the vicinity of 30 per cent to less than 3 per cent.

[Steve Bennett]

Standard data sorts bus value

Jennifer Foreshew | November 04, 2008

case study | BusNSW

THE NSW Government spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on bus services in rural areas and regional centres, but it was having difficulty measuring the value it received from contracts with private operators.



BusNSW executive director Darryl Mellish


Inadequate data also made it difficult for bus operators to argue their case for renewed government contracts by demonstrating value for money. The private operators transport 630,000 NSW school children to and from school daily, but manual reporting was making it difficult to compare service quality.

Government buses operate in the centre of Sydney, but private businesses are contracted to provide services in the rest of the state.

The Government is committed to providing school students with free travel, which is estimated to cost more than $600 million annually.

The NSW Ministry of Transport is responsible for providing policy advice, controlling budgets and regulating bus contracts.

There are more than 700 private bus operators in rural and regional parts of NSW, undertaking route and school services.

The challenge for the private bus operators was to standardise data and collate it, and to develop key performance indicators so operators could report and benchmark their performance and demonstrate service quality.

"The reporting to the ministry was very ad hoc," says Darryl Mellish, executive director of BusNSW, the bus and coach operators' association.

"The NSW Government was not happy with the reporting from the different operators, which made it difficult for them to judge whether they were getting value for money."
When new contracts were negotiated, Mellish says, the Government committed to better resources for reporting, while the operators accepted greater transparency and accountability.

Business adviser and accountant Pitcher Partners developed a web-based electronic transaction reporting application, NeTRAC Online, to assist bus operators with internal management reporting, reporting to Government and gathering KPI information.

NeTRAC Online extracts all electronically stored business information and facilitates capture of non-electronic data to fully automate all business reporting for the transport industry.

Bus operators can analyse patronage trends and cost per kilometre travelled on a month-by-month basis, while monitoring the health of their businesses.

The NeTRAC Extract, Transform and Load Suite allows businesses to consolidate data from existing software systems into one database. Operators can benchmark their businesses against the industry and comply with Government reporting requirements.

Mellish says the industry always had reporting, but the manual systems made reconciliation and data comparison difficult.

"NeTRAC Online allows operators to introduce management practices that can improve performance within particular ranges, which is very valuable," he says.

"We are also able to simplify some measures so they are comparable from one depot to another."

Individual bus operators typically pay a NeTRAC Online set-up fee of $5000-$10,000, plus an ongoing monthly fee for services.

NeTRAC Online was installed at operators' sites in Sydney in 2005 and the outer metropolitan area 18 months ago, and is now being extended to rural and regional NSW. This is expected to be completed in two to three years.

The technology is adaptable to the business needs of all bus operators, regardless of size or location.
Mellish says the main benefits of NeTRAC Online are improved reporting for government, enhanced business management for operators, and KPI presentation.

Bus operators using NeTRAC have been able to improve services such as driver training and redesign runs to make timetables more efficient.

"The average operator is saving the equivalent of one or two days weekly on administration and their downtime in answering inquiries has been reduced," Mellish says.

The system has allowed them to meet compliance requirements, while safety management systems and vehicle and driver authority checks are more streamlined and automated.

THE PROBLEM
A lack of industry information and statistics made it difficult for bus operators to argue their case for renewal of their government bus contracts by demonstrating value for money.

THE PROCESS
Web-based electronic transaction reporting application, NeTRAC Online, was installed by business adviser and accountant Pitcher Partners.

THE RESULT
Internal management reporting is better, as is reporting to Government and understanding of industry KPIs. Administration time has been slashed and services and processes have been streamlined and automated.

[Steve Bennett]

From ITNews:

Inside Virgin Blue’s IT transformation

By Ry Crozier
26 March 2009 01:11PM

Speaking at NSC Group's business optimisation summit in Sydney, Harvey provided a candid and wide-ranging update on the carrier's IT transformation, which has been underway for two-and-a-half years.

He said that Virgin Blue would continue to embrace partner and managed services.

To date, the airline has outsourced its data centres, remote infrastructure management and applications support and some application development to third-party providers.

"We started [the transformation] by prioritising the infrastructure that needed replacing, but then we stepped back and also said ‘how do we change the game'," Harvey said.

"We had to acknowledge we couldn't continue to do it all ourselves."

Harvey said that in continuing its transformation, the airline had "pushed 50 production servers out to Verizon in the United States" last week, freeing the time of up to seven staff for other projects.

"Cloud computing and storage-on-demand are also things we want to get into our business because they will drive efficiency," Harvey said.

Harvey also indicated that Virgin Blue is "looking at an offshore option" to maintain between 300 and 400 internal legacy systems handcoded by the airline's developers.

Earlier, he described inheriting this bank of applications when he joined Virgin Blue as a "set of handcuffs" due to the way they had been put together.

"We had a young and creative developer team that was mostly straight out of University so they had no point of reference for building or documenting systems," Harvey said.

"In their wisdom they decided they wouldn't use standard development frameworks so they built their own, which took shortcuts that enabled them to develop ten times faster than anyone else.

"The problem is you can't easily go to market and get someone to work on the systems because it takes six weeks to train them [in how they were developed]."

Harvey also showed a couple of images of the ‘data centre' he inherited. One photo showed a series of rackmount servers layered on top of what appeared to be a small footstool. It "clocked up $5 million" in revenue supporting a one-night airfare sale, Harvey said.

"We had lots of aged infrastructure and significant outages," Harvey said.

"We had the air-conditioning and UPS fail 10 or 15 times. I also got a call at four in the morning to say the SAN had collapsed. When I asked what was affected, the caller rattled off a big list of critical systems."

The data centre overhaul spearheaded by Harvey has seen it outsourced to a third-party provider.

Virgin Blue has also invested in Sun virtualisation and enterprise server technology in a project that internal IT staff has nicknamed ‘clusterzilla'.

"We've rationalised some 70 servers into the clusterzilla environment," Harvey said.

The overall environment includes 600 servers (approximately 30 per cent of which have been virtualised), 4,500 desktops, 500 laptops and 110 kiosks. The IT team supports an overall user base of 7,000, including third parties.

The airline also has a call centre run on Avaya technology that has been integrated and managed by NSC Group. Harvey said the airline plans to tie it more closely to its business intelligence systems to predict why customers might be calling for support and redirect their calls to appropriate people faster.

Inheriting an aging infrastructure that was being stretched to the limit posed a technical challenge for Harvey and his staff, but his bigger challenge was arguably transforming the culture of the IT department itself.

Even before the transformation could take place, Harvey battled against internal perceptions to secure funding for the required changes.

"The culture in IT was that we'd never get the amount we asked for because we were a low cost airline, but we got some quick wins down and that helped," Harvey said.

Harvey was also keen to change the perception that the IT team had to do everything in-house. He acknowledged that "everyone was doing an amazing job" keeping things together but that it wasn't a sustainable approach in the long-term.

"We had to stop doing things that others could do for us," he said.

"That's a very difficult message to take to a young team who think they're invincible and say they can build things faster than a third-party - and probably can.

"We spent a lot of time with the people we thought could help us add value in the longer term, worked out what their career drivers were and their aspirations.

"One thing that played into our hands was that a lot of them are getting engaged or married and have young families. They were already getting tired and the thought of jumping out of bed at 3am to fix something isn't that appealing. Work-life balance was a big play for us."

Harvey also formalised project management and "made it a recognised discipline" in the business by employing a German project manager. Harvey described him as one of the most process-driven people he had ever met - and someone that was immediately at odds with Virgin Blue's free-flowing organisational culture.

"A lot of my executive team had a lot of trouble with this guy at the start, but now they all sit on a portfolio committee prioritising projects using a single tool that he managed to drive in the first 12 months," Harvey said.

"In some cases you just have to ride out the criticism."

Harvey himself was also forced to make some tough decisions within months of coming on board.

"When I interviewed [for the role, Virgin Blue] was two years into replacing its reservation system which, for an airline, is a bit like open heart surgery," Harvey said.

The system had been earmarked to be completed when Harvey came on board, but when he arrived it was still incomplete.

"We aborted that project within three months," Harvey said. "It was a hard decision because I didn't have the full context of the project."

[Steve Bennett]

SITA and Oracle announce 15-year agreement to develop airline reservations system

23-Mar-2009

Oracle and SITA announced (19-Mar-09) details of a unique 15-year agreement to develop the most open and agile airline reservations system ever designed, using service oriented architecture (SOA) and advanced computing techniques.


SITA CEO, Francesco Violante said: "SITA's strategic technology partnership with Oracle is a major milestone in the development of our Horizon passenger management portfolio and will have a profound impact on the airline industry. It is putting the most advanced technology stack available at the service of our industry for the first time. Advanced technology is essential to the modernization of the airline reservations systems of our 138 airline customers and we expect many others will be attracted to Horizon by the success of the project."

The partnership is already set to bear fruit with the launch next month by SITA of Customer Journey, a Horizon feature providing real-time access to airline bookings for business intelligence applications and rapid retrieval of customer journey records across multiple search criteria.

Oracle Executive Vice President for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Loic Le Guisquet said: "This is a tremendous opportunity for Oracle and SITA to work together on one of the biggest IT modernization projects ever, implementing top quality design on a state-of-the-art architecture. This project will demonstrate Oracle's capacity to provide a full technology stack to modernize legacy applications in order to produce true SOA-enabled applications with very high transaction-processing capabilities.

"SITA is a strong strategic partner for Oracle and will be represented on the Oracle CIO Advisory Board and Customer Advisory Board with access to Oracle Labs and the Oracle Excellence Centre for co-innovation programmes."

SITA is making its largest-ever single project investment in the further development of its Horizon platform which involves a team of 400 software engineers and designers - including off-shore resources - spread across the globe. The implementation approach favours gradual migration of standard industry processes and selected innovative enhancements.

This approach enables SITA to develop highly flexible solutions as airlines migrate from today's mainframe technology to SOA open systems supported by Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Business Intelligence for advanced reporting capacity and Oracle Identity Management for security. SITA will also enjoy direct access to Oracle development resources, best practice advice and new versions of software over the next 15 years.

The new SITA Passenger Reservations System will cover Reservations, Inventory, Ticketing and Departure Control and will be completed progressively over the next five years following releases in 2009. SITA's overall business goals are to extend the scope of the Horizon platform to increase airline profitability, enhance customer centricity and self-service, optimize distribution and create actionable business intelligence.

(c) Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 23-Mar-09

[admin]

From the US, BI and Analytics comes in at #10:

PhoCusWright's 2009 Technology Trend Predictions
March 2009

Here is a summary. For the full (paid) report use the link above.

1 - Despite Market Woes, Pockets of Investment Still Exist

"During economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity."


2 - The Entire Trip Experience Will Be "Informationized"

In the past, the main focus of the travel value chain has been those components that resulted in a booking. Access to further information was a challenge because of limitations of mobile devices, lack of acceptable technology in hotel rooms, language barriers and no clear business model. This is all about to change.


3 - Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Open Source Spawn a New Flock of Innovators

Open Source has matured to the point that many companies are fully dependent on it. It has become an enabler for startups, allowing them to rapidly accelerate their time to market. At the PhoCusWright's November 2008 Travel Innovation Summit, demonstrator Home and Abroad explained that they would not have been able to bring their product to market if it had not been for Open Source.


4 - Suppliers (Finally!) Provide Personalized Shopping/Booking Tools

Today, most OTAs look much the same: Where do you want to go? When? Air only or hotel and/or car? To provide convenience and value to the customer, future learning and shopping screens will adapt to the users' stated profiles, observed profiles and shopping style. Similarly, the content presented will be the most meaningful to the customer.


5 - Technologies Will Continue to Converge

Ten years ago, television networks were distinct from the Internet. Video was limited to TV and you went to see a movie at the theater. Now you can make a phone call anywhere to anywhere in the world using your laptop. You can watch movies and TV and browse rich content on your mobile device. You can watch content from the Internet on your TV and wirelessly network your house for all manner of content.


6 - A Flood of New Mobile Travel and Location-Based Applications Come to Market

Mobile usage in travel applications has languished for years with a poor technology capability and an even worse business model. The mobile platform finally has interactive capability that makes it the fully functioning "3rd screen" alongside the desktop and laptop. With the growth of 3G (broadband wireless) subscriptions and smartphone adoption, apps will embrace location and context in a new way, enhancing the travel experience.


7 - Advertising Technology Transforms Travel Distribution

Pure play booking fee models will become dinosaurs as blended models involving highly targeted ads, referral fees and fees for service establish peaceful coexistence. The technology convergence discussed in Trend 5 will enable the convergence of business models.


8 - Still Searching...for Better Search

Last year the trends were "Semantic Technology and the Semantic Web will drive the next wave of Internet technology" and "Search will evolve to become more effective." These are still true. Lack of adoption of the formal semantic Web does not mean that search is not getting better. There are several instances where semantics are being used to improve search. As they begin to show differentiated business value over normal search, they will gain traction.


9 - Democratization of Supply Levels the Playing Field

In the beginning when the airlines created travel distribution, the GDSs (they were called CRSs then) controlled the distribution of travel content. This created an oligopoly. But times are changing. The implementation of standards for interconnection, the transparency of the Internet, Web services and mashups, new search tools and SaaS models have all contributed to the development of an open marketplace for travel distribution.


10 - Business Intelligence and Analytics Move to the Forefront

In tight times, you need to squeeze as much as possible from your existing operations and capabilities. This involves understanding what your competitors are doing, how efficient and effective your own operations are and what your customers are saying.

[admin]

Up close and personal

Abstracted from The Australian Financial Review

InterContinental Hotels Group announced plans to establish a new Crowne Plaza hotel in January 2009. Vice-president of enterprise technology, Alex Grigorian, said the hotel chain's new technology systems would secure its place at the top of the industry, with enterprise data and business intelligence to play a vital role in the future

Distributed by News Bites. Copyright 2008 LexisNexis Australia. All Rights Reserved

[Jane B]

WSJ APRIL 20, 2009
CIO INTERVIEW

Crisis IT

Gerry Coady of Frontier Airlines Holdings talks about the need to focus when times are tough
By BEN WORTHEN

In May 2007, Gerry Coady joined Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. as the company's chief information officer. Eleven months later, the Denver-based airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-court protection.

Since arriving, Mr. Coady, a veteran of the technology and energy industries, has focused on cutting costs for his department and pursuing information-technology projects that can help the airline generate revenue.

He spoke to The Wall Street Journal about managing through a crisis and the importance of focusing on a few projects and getting them done quickly. Here are edited excerpts of the conversation:

Looking Ahead
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: What were your first impressions of the airline industry?

MR. COADY: From an IT perspective it looked to be made up of a lot of siloed systems that ran different divisions. And while it did that effectively, there wasn't a lot of integration that could lead to better business intelligence, data mining or anything that could help better manage customers.

I really believe that there is a way to use information to get a competitive advantage, because the more you know about your customer and the more you know about their habits, the easier it is going to be for you to compete in the current environment. You could have a better idea of what your revenue is for that day exactly and how your sales are doing. You could adjust your decision making in a more real-time fashion.

WSJ: What changed for you when you went into bankruptcy?

MR. COADY: Some of the infrastructure projects that we would have liked to have done -- virtualization [software that makes servers run more efficiently], data warehousing and customer-management software -- were put on hold until post-exit [from bankruptcy-court protection], because they are expensive investments without a return in a short number of years.

From a hardware standpoint, our rule is, if it's functioning, it's functioning. So we said that unless it is broken we won't fix it.

WSJ: You rewrote Frontier's reservation system during this time. Why?

MR. COADY: We have a strong leadership team that believed that we needed to build for the future regardless of Chapter 11. We wanted to stop nickel-and-diming our customers but still be competitive with other airlines. Our CEO, who had come from Air Canada, had [built a system] that allowed customers to buy specific products. Some customers are not as cost-conscious as others, so they are fine paying a little bit more to get a seat assignment, a meal or a TV. We were not able to do that on the old system. So we set out to put our own Web site in place that would allow us to do a better job packaging our products so people would have the option to buy extras.

The first phase, which went live in December, offered [tickets for] economy, classic and classic plus. We can add things and take away things or change the pricing. In the past that would have been a custom project and probably would take several months to make any changes. This allows us to do it in near real time.

For the next phase we want to do pop-ups to suggest other products that may be of interest to customers. We will be able to do more dynamic selling of things like meals.

This is an opportunity to upsell. We were expecting for people to buy up 15% of the time, and we are seeing that it is more in the 30% to 40% range. These are people who pay for the seat assignment, people who pay for the meal or to check a bag upfront. We get the cash now, versus before we got it at the time of check-in.

WSJ: To what extent does the design contribute to the success of the site?

MR. COADY: I think that it contributes. We've designed it to be very simple. It is clear to a customer what their options are. It has a mouse-over that shows them what the products and services are. We didn't test it in any great depth, though. We got some input from key people, of course. But we were trying to get the product to market in six months or less, and we didn't have a whole lot of time to get opinions from people. There are pros and cons to market research, and by the time you can assimilate it all and figure out what someone wants, we would have been done with the project. So we figured it was easier to make it and then make changes rather than wait for the Holy Grail.

Sharpening the Focus
WSJ: You've made a point of focusing on just a handful of projects. How did that strategy come about?

MR. COADY: [Before we went into bankruptcy] we had a few hundred projects under way, which was consuming a lot of business and IT resources. At the time it was hard to manage everything. So we put together a program-management office and a steering committee, which was basically the CEO and his staff, and we did a weighting exercise to look at what were the key projects that we should do.

Even before bankruptcy we had gotten the activity list down from several hundred into the 20s. After the bankruptcy we decided to focus on the few projects that really reflected the airline's priorities, and those were to fly safe, to generate revenue, to take cost out and customer service.

WSJ: How do you get into a situation where you have several hundred projects at once?

MR. COADY: I think it happens because there are never enough resources to get everything done. And so a backlog builds up over the years. And then you have people's pet projects and it can pretty easily get out of control. At that stage we had approximately 100 people. So everyone had about three projects. You end up with a lot of projects that just seem to move along but never get completed.

I think it is easier to go from hundreds to 20 because by the time you get to the 20s the margin of differentiation becomes narrower and narrower. When you start looking at the hundreds you can weed out a lot of the fluff very early on. Some are projects that started under different management and the strategic priorities have shifted.

We had several meetings where we talked to the executives in the business and said this is your project and if you want to keep it then you have to explain to the organization why it is important.

WSJ: Does the bankruptcy experience create a need for speed?

MR. COADY: To some extent, yes. Our department now is about 50 people. A lot of the work was done by consultants and we've just been managing it and using the resources we have.

WSJ: So now that you have five people working on every project are you getting more done?

MR. COADY: I believe we are getting more done, but I also believe that we are getting better value done. People by nature will gravitate to what they can do. And sometimes they are doing something low down because at least they can do it. [The new approach] allows us to focus on higher-priority projects.

WSJ: What advice do you have for a colleague who is looking at having to do drastic cost cutting?

MR. COADY: Where a lot of people get into trouble is that they don't know where to cut when they have to cut. You have to have a clear understanding of your investments and the implications of the investments that you've made, so that if you do have to make cuts or reduce staff or service levels you know where to do it.

Vendor Relations
WSJ: What does the program-management office do?

MR. COADY: Basically we are trying to evolve the program-management office so that the managers know what vendors we have, what the costs of those vendors are and what we are paying for. It takes a lot of time, a lot of drive and a lot of discipline to do that. It comes back to really having a good idea of what the initial business case for a project is and what resources it is consuming, both people and otherwise. And also a good understanding of your contracts and what you are getting for your contracts and are you utilizing the products and services that you are paying for. I think in many places contracts aren't carefully scrutinized and vendors have, I don't want to say free rein, but certainly they have a lot of flexibility about whether they do everything they say they are going to get done. Many places don't have the discipline to enforce that.

Like your service-level agreements have to be met. If, for example, you have a system and you have managed service for that, who is responsible for all the patches and who does the groundwork to figure out if you need those patches? In many cases that is built into the contract, but businesses take on that responsibility themselves because they don't want to rely on the vendor or they don't realize that they are paying for it.

WSJ: Are you choosing who you buy software from differently than in the past?

MR. COADY: We are looking to see how we can form better and closer partnerships with fewer people, rather than having lots of groups with small bits of business each. We are trying to do a better job of leveraging who we do business with and then aggregating that so there is something in it for both parties -- make sure that there is enough revenue for them to make it worth working with us at a lower price point. But also so that we have fewer contracts to manage and [less] work to do managing them.

WSJ: Any other advice for a company doing a restructuring right now?

MR. COADY: I was lucky that I had some people on staff that had experience but were also new to the company. That allowed us to look at things from a fresh perspective. There was very little attachment to what was there before. It was easy for me to say that there are no sacred cows, so how do we decide what we should be focusing on and what is the right organizational structure to do it. There are always pros and cons, but given the pressure on us to quickly move, it was somewhat easier than with a group that had been around for years.

—Mr. Worthen is a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau.
Write to Ben Worthen at ben.worthen@wsj.com

[admin2]

By Andrew Starke, The Shout

Tabcorp is rolling out Tabcorp Gaming Solutions to the trade – a new service to assist clubs and pubs in managing their gaming machines.

More than 600 gaming industry representatives gathered in Melbourne for the launch which has been developed following the local Government decision to change the structure of gaming in Victoria.

In a move designed to break the duopoly held by Tabcorp and Tatts Group by 2012, all Victorian pubs and clubs will be able to buy pokie entitlements from the State Government at auction next year, enabling them to freely source and purchase poker machines.

Under the new gaming framework, pokie venues must return their existing machines to Tabcorp and Tatts by 2012. Tabcorp has launched the new service to help clubs and pubs manage their gaming machines from mid 2012.

In a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Tabcorp managing director of gaming Mohan Jesudason said the Tabcorp Gaming Solutions business would help venues change to the new gaming structure.

"The move to a new gaming structure will lead to dramatic changes in the way gaming businesses operate in the future," he said. “Tabcorp can share 15 years of market experience in the Victorian industry with venues that participate in the Tabcorp Gaming Solutions business.”

The new service will provide venues with industry and business intelligence, regulatory assistance and responsible gambling support, business development support, supply of proven electronic gaming machine products, support and maintenance services, and zero capital outlay finance packages, Tabcorp said.

[Steve Bennett]

TDW launches new tool for tourism companies to monitor online presence

Travel Blackboard, Thursday, 27 August 2009

The Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) this week has launched a brand new business intelligence tool which monitors the online performance of a web portal in order to better offer insights into tourism.

Pooling data from all Australian states and territories, the ATDW then extracts and analyses metrics conducive to doing business in the tourism sector for Australian tourism companies.

“MicroStrategy allows companies like ATDW to gain a deeper understanding of tourism trends in Australia,” said Patrick Elliott, MicroStrategy VP for Australia & New Zealand.
“With MicroStrategy’s easy-to-use Web interface and outstanding scalability, via ATDW, tourism operators can drill down into the data and seek the information they need to make strategic plans for boosting tourism numbers in this country.”

This recent launch comes after the June launch of the Jackson Report on Tourism stipulated that the Australian tourism industry faces a short-term challenge and long-term decline unless action is taken to boost tourism.

MicroStrategy claims its insights will help ATDW in a strong position to address the recommendations outlined within the Jackson report for actively driving growth in Australian tourism.

Currently over 150 websites access the ATDW content.