HKTB PartnerNet
B2B Portal for HK Tourism Trade
Hong Kong Tourism Board
Tourism is a major pillar of the economy of Hong Kong. In 2012, visitor arrivals to Hong Kong reached another record high of 48,615,113. The Total Tourism Expenditure Associated to Inbound Tourism amounted to HK$ 296.56 billion. In view of the importance of Hong Kong Tourism Industry, the Government established the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) to task with marketing and promoting Hong Kong as a travel destination worldwide and enhancing visitors' experience once they have arrived.
In 2001, HKTB developed a PartnerNet website for information dissemination from HKTB to the local trade partners. After in operation for more than 10 years, HKTB decided to redevelop the PartnerNet aiming to provide a one-stop online platform to facilitate local and overseas trade networking and business building. A consultancy study was conducted and four major issues were identified subsequently:
- Corporate branding is not consistent to lead the professional image of HKTB
- Content are not well organized or grouped
- No market-specific version for overseas audience
- Lack of overseas trade partners information to facilitate business building
- Paper-centric approach to service provision
- Heavy reliance on Business Development Team to update content on PartnerNet
- Information management span across several loosely coupled backend systems
- No centralized database which combine number of databases
In 2011, HKTB assigned Computers and Technologies (C&T) and WestcomZivo as the service providers to design, program and develop a new PartnerNet website to meet the aforesaid challenges. In this project, C&T was responsible for the overall project management and infrastructure development while WestcomZivo was involved in the website design and development. In Nov 2012, the new PartnerNet was official launched. In the next year, HKTB PartnerNet website got Sliver Award in the “Websites: Redesign/ Relaunch” category in Astrid Award 2013.
This award recognizes the new PartnerNet website meets the international standard in view of innovation, functionality and quality. After finishing two rounds of enhancement, this project was completed in Dec 2013.
Develop Contemporary PartnerNet by the use of ICT
The old PartnerNet website has operation for more than 10 years. Both the hardware infrastructure and the key software components (database system and application servers) of PartnerNet have already reached their capacity and end of product life cycle. Therefore, HKTB decided to develop a new PartnerNet, but not to only upgrade the old one. Together with C&T, we designed a contemporary Application Environment and Infrastructure to address the issue of system performance, capacity constraints and backup recovery as well as to have a scalable infrastructure to support HKTB upcoming e-marketing initiatives for trade.
Drive One-stop Operation by Intelligent Data Migration
In the past, there were 6 databases in HKTB’s systems. The data from these 6 databases were relevant, but without linkage. Users and administrators needed to spend lots of time to access different systems to consolidate a complete record. Therefore, establish an efficient data management system to ensure information consistency and integrity is one of the key objectives in this project.
Transform Business Model with Interactive e-Marketplace
Building an e-Marketplace for the travel trade is another key objective for this project. HKTB wanted to build an interactive e-business platform to support both the local and overseas trade partners on their business building activities.
Therefore, we developed the e-Marketplace with the concept “One-stop networking & business hub”, which provides various two-way communication tools for Tourism Service Providers (TSP) and visitors. In the e-Marketplace, there is “Enquiry Basket” function for site visitors to send enquiries to multiple companies at the same time. Visitors can also submit Request for Proposal (RFP) by batch or individually to specific suppliers. The request will be captured in the system and email notification will be sent to both the selected supplier and HKTB.
The webpages in this e-Marketplace are database-driven. Visitors can look for various tourism companies, products, services, offers, promotions and venues with our search engines. The search engine provide simple mode for user to fill in keywords for quick search and advanced model for users to search by multiple criteria in order to get accurate search results.
In the past, the old PartnerNet website was stale, did not clearly and prominently convey the website’s value and purpose with too much prose text. It may not attract site visitors to revisit PartnerNet regularly. Therefore, we not only focus on design an attractive layout, develop powerful functions for PartnerNet, but also understand the users’ operation habit to reorganize the website content for easy navigation and ensure the new PartnerNet is easy to use for both TSPs and HKTB internal users.
Enable Easy Navigation with Attractive & User-friendly Design
In the new PartnerNet website, the content is reorganized into 8 sections. Each section has its own theme color and specific aim, so that users can easily access the information they need.
Improve User Experience with Featured Service Components
A lot of service components are developed for the PartnerNet, which aimed to help visitors to find the information they desired quickly, organize the information they retrieved easily, and receive the information they are interested regularly.
- In-Site Search - Allow site visitors to engage searching function for relevant web pages within the PartnerNet by entering keywords in the field provided.
- Print Basket - Allow site visitors to bookmark the webpage for future management on printing, instead of printing any single page one by one.
- eAlert Subscription - Allow site visitors to subscript HKTB’s eAlert service, so that they will be informed of any updates of PartnerNet.
Provide Value-added Services by Secure Front-end System
The two services providers designed a completely new front-end system - MyPartnerNet for registered users to update company profile, post latest news tourism products and offers. These updates would be reflected on company directory of e-Marketplace directly for maximum industry exposure. Different types of registered users have different access levels to the platform’s restricted sections. For example, registered and accredited Quality Tourism Services Scheme (QTS) Merchants can renew their membership for QTS scheme while other TSPs members cannot.
Behind MyPartnerNet, there are Super Administrators and respective administrators for different users groups and markets to perform content management task such as approve, reject and delete the update initiated by the registered users, so that all content uploaded by registered users are monitored.
Streamline Daily Operation by Flexible Back-end System
Back office System is developed for HKTB internal users to update and manage the information in PartnerNet. It is developed in a modular design to ensure it is scalable for future enhancement. Modules, features and fields can be added into the program structure easily when required.
Increase PartnerNet Usability with Diversified Channels
PartnerNet is not only an in-house application. It is also a TSP communication platform and informative website. Therefore, the following channels were used to increase PartnerNet usability
- On-site User Training – let the users got full grasp of how to surf through the interface and make good use of PartnerNet functions by series of training
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – adopted SEO best practices on website design to ensure PartnerNet rank well for keywords on popular search sites.
- Overseas Market Versions – developed customized overseas versions of PartnerNet for 13 markets in 8 languages to serve visitors from worldwide.
Improve the Performance of PartnerNet Website
After improving site usability to enhance browsing experience, PartnerNet received a lot of member registration and significant increase in usage.
PartnerNet Members Update (International Version)
* Figures as of 30 Nov 2013
Total Individual Members
7,272
Total Individual Members
40,094
Total Individual Members
20,399
Usage of PartnerNet (International Version)
* Figures based on Webtrend from HKTB (Period 2012: from Nov 2011 to Oct 2012 / Period 2013: from Nov 2012 to Oct 2013)
5,867,140(2012) > 33,382,024(2013)
+468%
488,928(2012) > 2,567,848(2013)
+425%
16.298(2012) > 85,595(2013)
+425%
Since 2011, HKTB has adopted “Asia’s World City” as it global marketing theme. Under this theme, many projects are launched to highlight Hong Kong’s international and cosmopolitan setting. PartnerNet – an application that utilized ICT plays an important role in this theme by enriching trade partners experience and reinforcing Hong Kong’s image.
With the e-Marketplace in PartnerNet, it enables more collaboration between TSPs, so that more new tourism products, events and offers are created to cater for the need and interest of different visitor segments. The whole Hong Kong tourism becomes more energetic to support Hong Kong’s economic growth.
The PartnerNet has 13 market versions in 8 languages. It drives more visitor arrivals from not only key markets, such as Mainland China, Taiwan and South Korea, but also attract travelers from new markets like India, Russia and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) Markets. The diversified tourists stabilize our pillar of the Hong Kong economy.
In a word, PartnerNet is an excellent example of how ICT transformed the business model and stimulates various industries besides tourism to create more business opportunities.
