Tourism launches its new website

The National Department of Tourism (NDT) has launched its new website. Built in Microsoft SharePoint 2010, the site is just the first stage in the progressive approach that the NDT has adopted to unlocking the value of the Internet for all its stakeholders.

SharePoint 2010 is a technology platform with a very broad range of capabilities with features that will enable collaboration between the NDT and its audiences in future.

It was selected for its optimised content search, interactive technology and ability to personalise parts of the site which will make it an ideal platform for further developing the portal for the department to deliver on its mission of being a strategy focused department. The department is committed to creating an environment conducive for growing and developing tourism through innovation, strategic partnerships and collaboration, providing information and knowledge management services and strengthening institutional capacity.

“According to the Gartner Group, web 2.0 is a transformative force that’s propelling organisations across all industries towards a new way of doing business, characterised by harnessing collective intelligence, openness and network effects” says Jay Singh, the department’s Corporate Communications Director.

In the short term, the website has been built and restructured around the information about the mandates upon which the department must deliver which is the information stage. The next stage would be the engagement and networking phase and thereafter the collaboration phase.

Over time the website will be enhanced into a fully interactive platform which not only delivers information, but also supports the department’s delivery and stakeholder engagement objectives in the long term.

As part of the strategy development for unlocking the value of the web to the tourism industry,the NDT looked at tourism departments all over the world to benchmark the department against the very best.

The longer term strategy includes individual profiling, interesting applications, supporting the tour guides, some automated processes like knowledge creation and the extension of the NDT’s communication into social media.

The new NDT Web Portal goes live at 12h00 on Friday, 27 July 2012!

Enquiries:

National Department of Tourism

Trevor Bloem

Chief Director: Communications

Telephone: +27 (0) 12 444 6607

Cell: +27 (0) 82 771 6729

E-mail: tbloem@tourism.gov.za

Lerato Mogorosi

Telephone: +27 (0) 12 444 6620

Cell: +27 (0) 83 545 2411

E-mail: lmogorosi@tourism.gov.za

ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM