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Organization type: IT Contractor
Profile:
Worldhotel-link.com Limited (WHL) is a commercial accommodation booking business working to link small tourism businesses with technology that will help them reach out and market to a world-wide client base. The locally owned and operated e-marketplaces are advanced e-commerce-enabled accommodation booking sites, sharing a common database-driven booking system.
WHL is the supplier of the WHL e-marketplaces and provides technical, operational and marketing support services to the community of e-marketplace operators (MPOs). MPOs are usually local hotel associations, tourism authorities, or private sector companies in the tourism sector who share a common passion for and interest in the sustainable development of local tourism.
All web sites have the same look and feel, creating a community of sites that is at once familiar to travelers and trusted by them. All accommodation providers displayed on the e-marketplace have their own individual websites within the portal, displaying extensive information about their properties, along with interactive locator maps.
WHL works to connect responsible travelers with accommodation providers committed to building a sustainable future for their businesses and destinations. WHL has created a means for accommodation providers to learn how to differentiate their properties by adopting sustainable tourism initiatives, and has supplied a number of sustainable tourism case studies. Planned value-added services include online training material for small hotels.
WHL has also created a travelers’ guide to sustainable tourism to introduce ways to help travelers engage in responsible travel and help them assess the initiatives that accommodation providers are making in caring for their destination.
Beyond this, WHL has built-in tools to improve both the traveler’s and accommodation owner’s experience, allowing them to manage much of their own interaction with the WHL community via their own log-on access. To promote social and environmental sustainability among tourism enterprises, WHL is leveraging the network of sites and clients (the independent travelers booking via the sites) to apply a bottom-up (eBay style) supplier/buyer ratings system. Accommodation providers display their product (describing environmental, social and/or cultural activities that they have undertaken to care for the local destination)—displayed as a “caring for the destination” rating. A traveler feedback section informing other travelers about the success of described products/activities is also included.
The business grew from a project initiated by the Mekong Private Sector Development Facility (IFC-World Bank) in 2002 to assist small- and medium-scale local accommodation providers to access the Internet. High costs and lack of skills had kept these providers in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam from being able to leverage the Internet to market their properties. The solution was to create a local e-marketplace in each case that would be able to share the costs, centralize the necessary skills and, most importantly, act as the interface between the local accommodation provider and the independent traveler. These local e-marketplaces collect and maintain member information on the web and take bookings via email (working in English with travelers and in the local language with members). In this manner, the local MPOs earn commissions that stay in the local region and assist in the development of the local industry.
The results of the pilot in the Mekong have been very encouraging, with the result that WHL now has a large number of interesting, locally owned and competitively priced accommodation properties online for the first time. In what is a first for the independent traveler, it is now possible to access and book these previously unknown hotels, guesthouses, and hostels via one e-marketplace network.
WHL services include:
- The E-Marketplace Portal. This is the web site for the local partner (MPO) through which travelers access the individual member web sites. Each portal has the same look and feel and navigation as all the others in the WHL network but contains different content, (“cover photos,” etc.), that make each site unique.
- The Hotel Web Site. All members of an e-marketplace have their own web sites. Each site is five pages and includes an introduction and information on rooms and rates, facilities, location map (with zoom), host, and a booking page.
- The Web Marketing Package. The sites target independent travelers who use the Internet and search engines to plan and book their accommodations. It is therefore extremely important to rank well on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, etc. When a new site is launched, there are several steps taken to ensure the site is listed on these search engines and that their rankings are high.
- The Booking Administration System (BAS). All MPO sites are connected to a central database-driven booking administration system. This allows provision of payment gateways, inter-office benchmarking, a traveler loyalty program, etc.
- The Resource Library. This online library provides all the user guides, procedures, and manuals necessary for setting up and running the online e-marketplace business. It also provides a huge general pool of information for MPOs to use to set up and/or improve their businesses and capabilities.
Areas of Sustainable Tourism (ST) expertise:
- E-commerce
- Certification
- Economic Growth
- Sustainable tourism
- E-marketing
- SME development
Particular tourism niches:
- SME accomodation provider capacity building
- E-marketing
- Sustainability
Regions worked:
- Africa:
- Asia and the Near East:
- Cambodia
- China
- Fiji
- India
- Indonesia
- Laos
- Papua New Guinea
- Samoa
- Thailand
- Vanuatu
- Vietnam
- Europe and Eurasia:
USAID projects:
Macedonia Tourism Portal e-BIZ project (2004)
Recent ST partnerships and collaborations:
- AusAid
- Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism
- Education Development Center
- International Finance Corporation (World Bank)
- Mekong Private Sector Development Facility (MPDF)
- Program for Eastern Indonesia Small and Medium Enterprise Assistance (PENSA)
- China Project Development Facility (CPDF)
- Pacific Enterprise Development Facility (PEDF)
- Africa Project Development Facility (APDF)
- UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
- USAID
Contact:
Len Cordiner
Worldhotel-link.com Limited
Unit 1206-7 12/F New Victory House
93-103 Wing Lok Street
Central, Hong Kong
Phone: +852 8303 1772
E-mail: len@worldhotel-link.com
www.worldhotel-link.com
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