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About Discover Tasmania

The Discover Tasmania portal is an initiative of Tourism Tasmania. The sleek design of this diverse site belies the depth of information provided – not only on tourism but also for those wanting to do business, work and live in Tasmania. Also featured is information on indigenous culture, native animals and plants, and facilities for travellers with disabilities.

Discover Tasmania is the leading source of information for those planning a holiday to the island of inspiration otherwise known as ‘Tassie’. The site offers helpful details on accommodation, activities, attractions to see, suggested itineraries, transportation, news of upcoming events. There are also links to partner the airlines and some fantastic video clips to watch.

Challenge – to re-invent the brand

When Squiz became involved in September 2007 Tourism Tasmania was looking to redevelop the Discover Tasmania website in conjunction with a re-brand of the electronic and print media. All of the graphic design was created by a 3rd party for Squiz to apply to MySource Matrix.

The core technical challenge for Squiz was to integrate Tourism data from the ‘Tiger Tours’ data warehouse (Tourism Tasmania’s implementation of the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) database). This required the development of import scripts that would accept changes to the Tiger Tours’ database on a nightly basis.

Additionally, the Squiz Content Migration Team was engaged to migrate content from the existing website into MySource Matrix along with any content written for the new site.

Squiz delivered the revamped site in December 2007 to coincide with delivery of the re-branded electronic and print media.

Solution – Integration

Squiz delivered a number of services for the new Discover Tasmania site including:

  • Implementation of the Squiz supported open source Content Management System (CMS) MySource Matrix
  • Implementation of the new design provided by a 3rd party design agency
  • Factoring in the accessibility and usability issues of a high traffic commercial website without compromising the 3rd party design
  • A project manager that co-ordinated deliverables from each of Squiz’s business units, (eg design, implementation and development) and followed the project through to completion of the implementation process
  • Training in the use of MySource Matrix including an assessment to test participant knowledge and comprehension.
  • Substantial content migration by the Squiz specialist content migration team in Hobart
  • Support for the setup of the advanced, replicated server architecture
  • Creation of a custom built ‘generic weather feed’ asset to display current weather data (state wide) from The Weather Company
  • Implementation of Google Analytics to show Tourism Tasmania where site visitors come from and how they interact with the Discover Tasmania site
  • Implementation of Hit Box Enterprise (HBX) to present simple and relevant business intelligence (in real time) regarding traffic flow through the Discover Tasmania site
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) with enhanced product listings (paid listings)

Integration was a substantial part of the solution including:

  • The functionality to integrate with, and pull dynamic information from, external databases. In particular the Tiger Tours Tasmanian Tourism Data Warehouse which also feeds the same information to the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW).
  • Inclusion of image light box functionality with the Tiger Tours product to create a visually appealing means for visitors to view images of tourism products and venues.
  • Integration with the Google Maps widget to accurately display the location of attractions and accommodation products in Tasmania.

Result – You’ll want to Discover Tasmania

Discover Tasmania is ‘the’ information portal for those wanting to do business with, or work and live in Tasmania. MySource Matrix has proven to be a robust and flexible platform that will effectively serve the Discover Tasmania websites to the four corners of the world. Because MySource Matrix does not attract per-site licensing fees, Tourism Tasmania can add the additional international sites as necessary, without additional cost. Additionally, MySource Matrix does not attract per-user licensing fees so there is no cost penalty to add further content editors.

International Versions

Squiz are also assisting Tourism Tasmania with a solution for a further eight international versions of the site that will all be running from a single instance of MySource Matrix. Content is to be single sourced as much as possible. Eventually there will be a total of 22 international homepage variations to cater for the major tourism markets around the world.

The additional international versions will be Simplified English, Italian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Additional integration with the MaxMind product GeoIP will ensure that visitors can be automatically directed to the most appropriate site based on their geographic location.

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