ATDW-Online will offer considerable improvements to industry operators by making it easier to manage their product information. With increased capability, the new platform will be less labour intensive and overall improve the user experience.
Yesterday marked the launch of the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse’s (ATDW) totally redesigned and rebuilt technology platform, ATDW-Online, which will progressively roll out nationally in stages across each Australian State and Territory.
Following a decision by all the Australian States and Territory Tourism Organisations (STOs), to evolve in line with technology trends, streamline and futureproof their individual product databases, it was agreed to build a centralised, single national data management application, which will better support and improve functionality for all tourism operators.
“As such, we are pleased to introduce you to Australia’s ‘Smartest Tourism Destination’ which is the result of an exhaustive program of work over the past year. However we believe that the investment in both time and money will ensure that Australia’s Tourism industry has access to world leading technology which will serve us well in the years to come. We are genuinely excited about what the platform is going to allow us to do and there is no doubt that the industry is going to love the fact that we have focussed on making it easy,” said Mark Williams, CEO of ATDW.
Directly supporting around 540,000 jobs, the tourism sector is Austalia’s largest services export earner. With the introduction of this new ATDW-Online technology platform, the entire tourism sector will gain significant advantage, in particular the small and medium tourism product owners with limited access to digital marketing resources.
“Globally unique, the ATDW’s value is providing an easy and cost effective solution for a broad range of distributors to access comprehensive, up-to-date and high quality Australian information and product content. The ATDW database and distribution network of over 150 qualified websites facilitate leads to almost 40,000 tourism products across 10 categories. An essential partner to support marketing and distribution in Australian tourism, the ATDW plays a particularly important role in the Small to Medium Tourism Enterprise sector and regional Australia, who don’t usually have large marketing budgets,” continued Williams.
ATDW-Online will offer considerable improvements to industry operators by making it easier to manage their product information. With increased capability, the new platform will be less labour intensive and overall improve the user experience. Some of the new features include:
— National standardisation of information
— Clean, uncluttered page designs which are simple to navigate
— Intuitive user-friendly platform
— Faster response times and instant updates
— Instant password resets
— Allows for multiple users, linked to one account
— Accepts Vimeo as well as YouTube videos
— Additional event categories have been added, as well as a new Food & Drink category
— Mobile compatible
— Analytics Dashboard with access to comprehensive statistics & graphs
— Larger Image requirement with helpful image uploading tool
Williams concluded: “Just as smartphones have become invaluable to us, so this SMART technology platform will improve performance and productivity of busy tourism operators through Australia, enabling them to easily manage their online content and offering them access to an extensive network of digital marketing channels to promote their businesses online. And for those operators who are not yet listed in the ATDW database, this will be a great opportunity to jump on board!”
As the ATDW-Online platform progressively rolls out, State Tourism Organisations will communicate with their members in due course with further information including new log-in details.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
