Links:
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Institute
for Tourism
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Business Intelligence System in Tourism Institute for Tourism Zagreb has expanded the range of activities with additional service of providing information about tourist supply and demand trough web interface to domestic and foreign users. Situation Institute for Tourism is a leading research and consulting institution in field of tourism in Croatia. Founded at 1959., over the years it became institution with great practical experience in tourism development and management. Institute expertise is based on scientific work, continuous market research, business environment monitoring and continuous improving of multidisciplinary team. It is intention of Institute for Tourism to widen existing range of activities with new service: providing tourism information trough web OLAP interface using existing databases which are continuously updated for many years and are the result of institute's own continuous research. The new project is started under the name of BIST – Business Intelligence System in Tourism. New and inovative service is based on user subscription model in tree different levels of details. There is also a free model that is intended to all potentially interested users who would like to try BIST system and has lowest level of details and data for one year only. Goal for the first phase is to provide data on tourist arrivals and overnights as well as accommodation capacity. Next phases would provide data on tourist spending, competency, trends and forecasts. User interface, as well as data, would be on Croatian and English language. Solution Source data for tourist supply and demand that is used in the first phase was provided by Croatian Central Bureau of Statistics. Data was provided as CSV files, which are loaded into SQL Server database for further transformation and from which cubes are build on Analysis Services OLAP server. Panorama Software E-BI server is used as connection between Analysis Services and Internet Information Service web server, and enables web data access. Web Access enables web access two ways: by Java applet or DHTML, so users with different browsers can view data. User interface is written in two languages: English and Croatian. User sign-in procedure is fully automated and is done when user access to the system for the first time. Special attention is paid to security, which is implemented on multiple levels: operating system level, OLAP server level and Panorama E-BI Platform level. Solution is the result of in-house effort with external help and consultancy of Poslovna Inteligencija, Microsoft partner and also regional Panorama Software distributor. First phase implementation took three months. BIST users can analyze and view data with several dimensions: time (year, month, season), territory (country, region, town, island...), market, accommodation (private, collective), arrivals (domestic, foreign). First point of history is year 2001, and data is updated every month. Level of detail depends on subscription model. Business Advantages With implementation of BIST system Institute for Tourism became Business Intelligence provider and has widened range of services. Existing infrastructure will be used for further development. Currently, next phase, which includes nautical tourism, is in development. Described implementation is important example of using accumulated business knowledge and providing quality service on Internet by using minimal technology investment.
The BIST project marks the first time that a tourism organization used business intelligence to offer users direct access to information," said dr. Blazenka Vrdoljak Šalomon, IT Director, Institute for Tourism Zagreb. "We strongly believe that BIST will enable Croatian tourism to become even more competitive." |
