Background: The Remit of International Tourist Offices
Over time, and with the development of network technology in
the past three decades, the role of international tourist offices in the UK has
undergone big changes. The customer-focussed brochure distribution and counter
services offered by the tourist offices of the major destinations for UK
tourist - and many of the smaller countries also - have virtually disappeared.
In their place are easy-access online facilities delivering detailed
destination information and a platform for video and image-rich presentations
for potential customers to enjoy at their leisure.
It was already clear in the early days of the evolving
Country Connect relationship with UK-based tourist offices, that the focus was
very much shifting. The preferred role was in building press and tour operator
contacts, where knowledge of the attractions of individual countries could be
cost-effectively disseminated in newspapers, magazines and the brochures of the
major sellers. Coupled with this were programmes of "meet the public"
holiday fairs and of course, a presence at landmark industry Travel shows
including the embryonic World Travel Market which was growing apace in the late
1980's.
Emerging Technologies
During this time, and before the arrival of the world wide
web, the use of technology to deliver information in the UK was limited in a
way which is almost incomprehensible today. The available platform to reach the
UK consumer from the early 1980s was BT's Prestel system, which never reached a
userbase beyond 95,000 due to in part to the sheer cost, the difficulties of
dealing with a monopoly supplier in the early days, the limitations of the
viewdata technology it employed; and last but not least, the knowledge gaps
amongst tourism management chiefs.
But it was always clear, with reduced budgets in the early
1990s, that the old model of direct customer focus was impossible to maintain
without technology, and tourist offices increasingly placed themselves higher
up the pyramid of consumer networking, relying on press, tour operator and
travel agency partnerships to deliver their message. At the same time, viewdata
technology had found great favour with tour operators and ferry companies. Thus
from a few early adopters in the mid-1980s, viewdata ( with text and bizarrely
limited graphics capability) became the platform of choice for tour operators
to deliver reservations and product information facilities to the UK travel
agency network.
Viewdata Systems
It was on this network that tourist offices were first able,
through pioneering work done by Country Connect amongst others, to deliver its
destination information to a receptive travel industry audience through travel-focussed
independent viewdata systems. Ideas of
information delivery through technology thus became firmly established during
these years. Eventually of course, the
future remit of tourism information delivery to the holidaymaker was going to
move away from dedicated print and travel agency intermediaries to online resources as soon as the technology
allowed. Country Connect moved with those times and created its presence on the
web as a portal to key destination information.
About Country Connect Tourist Office Directory
We researched our information through direct mailings,
through contact with each office, and through contact with the individual
Embassy representing each country in the UK.
Country Connect initially started working with UK-based
national tourist offices in 1989, and since that time until its closedown in July
2020, established regular newsfeeds for
timely distribution to the UK travel industry via closed, managed networks
including AT&T's ISTEL throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s. Over
time, elements from these feeds were made available to the public via the
Country Connect website directory and information platform, and comprised
regular updates on travel offers, new airline routes, new holiday programmes
from tour operators and much else of interest to the UK-resident world
traveller and holidaymaker.
In addition to the contact information, Country Connect
offered a country-by-country link to official government travel advice, BBC
climate statistics, as well as to the Word Travels destination guide and the
CIA factbook for in-depth country profiling.
But then the world continued to move on…..