discovery travel network

Services: Strategy, Website Design, Website Development, Website Hosting, Booking System, Content Management, Search Engine Optimisation
Technologies: ASP.Net, ASP, Access, MYSQL Database, XHTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX.
Launched: From October 2005 (ongoing project)
URL: varies

Background
Founded in 2005, Discovery Travel Network is an online travel agent, setup to establish and manage a global network of travel websites providing both business and leisure travellers with an invaluable resource when planning their travel itinerary.

The travel websites cover hotels, self catering, car hire, flights, cruises, events and excursions across the UK, Europe, USA, Middle East and Australasia.

Project Brief
The complex project involved the creation of a wide range of travel websites meeting the following objectives:

Phase 1

The creation of 50 localised destination portals within year 1, featuring information relating to where to stay, what to do, where to eat and how to get to your holiday destination of choice.
To optimise each of the above portals for effective search engine placement within the organic listings.
To create a centralised content management system allowing for easy administration and updating of the hotels, self caterers, restaurants and attractions featured on each portal.

Phase 2 To create ancillary websites focusing on niche market sectors, including dedicated websites for villa holidays, cruises and travel health products.

Phase 3

To integrate and dynamically deliver inventory from 3rd party accommodation databases via xml.
To provide real-time online booking capability for each of the travel services offered throughout the network.
To create a comprehensive, centralised travel website to operate on the domain www.discovery.travel, containing xml-driven inventory from a range of providers.

The Outcome
October 2005 saw the launch of Discovery Travel Network's first tourism portal - Torquay.com. Providing a comprehensive resource for visitors looking to visit Torquay in South Devon, the website quickly gained over 200 top 5 positions on Google and was visited by over 900,000 people in 2006. In 2007, this increased to over 1 million people.

Early in 2007, several of the websites received BBC accreditations, with EasyJet also choosing to feature one of the sites on their in-flight magazine as a recommended resource for planning a trip to Northern Italy (www.discovercomo.com).

Over the course of 2007, Website Vision developed a further 50+ tourism portals featuring towns and cities across the world, with more than 4 million people having used the websites to research their holidays by the end of 2007.

An ecommerce website selling health products to help travellers stay healthy on holiday was launched in October 2007, with a further site promoting villa holidays being added to the network in January 2008.

We are currently in the process of delivering Phase 3 of the project, by providing an xml-driven solution to offer online booking for hotels, flights and car hire through each of the websites and we have now been contracted to provide a further 150 destination portals over the next 18 months.

Collectively, the websites now hold countless first page positions on Google, and are accessed by hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers and business travellers per month. We are now looking forward to rolling out the online booking engine through the network to further improve the functionality available for users.

Visit a sample of the websites at:

www.visitlondon.net
www.torquay.com
www.discoverytravelnetwork.com
www.discoverytravelhealth.com
www.lastminutevillaholiday.co.uk
www.discoverypasscard.com