NRMA to drive tourism
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 14:43When they wanted to ‘corner’ the motoring market the NRMA chose Devnet. Using Devnet developed aggregation technology; the NRMA Trip Planner became the most visited area of the NRMA website within its first three months of operation.
Integrating Google’s mapping engine with tourism information and hotel / motel booking facilities the NRMA Trip Planner is a highly sophisticated online initiative. The application can alert you to convenient petrol stations and eateries, help you find the local car rental office or present offers to members.
A key element of the application is the ability for the NRMA to define complex business rules that tie together offers and the information it presents to map users.
Reference – Australian IT Online
Mahesh Sharma | September 22, 2009
NRMA Motoring and Services is developing an online tourism platform as it seeks to extract value from its web properties.
The NRMA Trip Planner is based on the Google Maps engine and the maps are overlaid with tourism information from the national motoring club tourism body AAA Tourism.
It is the first version of the platform, which replaced a four-year-old system. It was built by integrator Devnet over the past three months and cost more than $100,000.
The platform will use aggregation technology developed by Devnet and eventually provide geographically based information about tourism locations and local businesses.
It can be used to plan holidays nationally and book accommodation in real time.
NRMA digital head Mick Baber said the Trip Planner was a core part of the organisation’s digital strategy to drive revenues from tourism-based activities.
He said the mynrma.com.au site attracted 350,000 unique visitors, and the platform would help double that figure over the next 12 to 18 months.
“It’s only about three months since we’ve been doing Trip Planner in its current form, and the users are pulling in about
1.5 million” map impressions,” Mr Baber said.
“Trip Planner is the most-visited page on the site, so we’ll use it as the vehicle to drive most, if not all, of the growth to the mynrma site. It’s going to be one of our major platforms in terms of driving traffic to the website and driving transactional values to our travel businesses and our associated motoring businesses.”
Mr Baber differentiated the trip planner from Google Maps and other tourism sites, which simply showed how to get from one destination to another.
“Around the Asia-Pacific region, no one is really trying to corner the motoring market as such,” Mr Baber said.
“There’s lots of point A to point B but no one is pulling it together in a cohesive manner and I think that’s our goal — to really be able to drive tourism off the beaten track.
“That’s the beauty of what we’ve done. We have a connection with motorists in NSW and in other states through other clubs.”
He said more functions would be added to the platform, including a new booking engine.
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