INTRODUCTION
Continuing on from an earlier article in this publication that considers portals and their relevance to destination tourism, this article investigates the case study of the Margaretriver. com Web portal. Margaretriver.com is based on a brokerage model of portals and this structure has been important to its development. Also critical to its success is the collective approach taken by small and medium tourist enterprises (SMTEs) as they have coalesced around shared assets that belong to the region.
The evolution of the Margaret River Tourism Association and its coordination of tourism in the region culminating in the portal as it is today, suggest that the role of a champion, community, social identity, and collaborative behaviour are important to successful destination marketing. These factors have been identified earlier in this publication as being important antecedents to collaborative commerce (c-commerce) of which this portal is an example.
WEB PORTAL: MARGARETRIVER.COM
A discussion of portals, portals and the Internet, information technology (IT) and tourism destination marketing, and the role of collaboration around IT, including collaborative commerce (c-commerce), was the subject of an earlier article in this publication. This article serves as an illustration of that discussion and considers the collaborative aspects of Web portals via Margaretriver.com—a successful exemplar of c-commerce. Some of the reasons for this success are outlined and issues and challenges for the future are discussed.
Margaret River is a small region located around 300 kilometres south of Perth, Western Australia. The region is a thriving one characterised by small businesses associated with rural pursuits—agriculture especially dairy and the wine industry, and tourism.
Margaretriver.com is akin to a cooperative. Around 450 local SMTEs have taken up membership of the local Margaret River Tourist Association, which oversees the portal in conjunction with a local IT enterprise—Queens-berry Information Technologies Pty Ltd. It was the coming together of the Association and this IT expert that led to the development of the portal (see Figure 1) and the Bookeasy system that supports it.
According to various categories of business models observable on the Web, portals can take many forms (Rappa, 2006). Margaretriver.com is an example of the brokerage model. Brokers are effectively market makers bringing buyers and sellers together facilitating transactions and unifying, in this case, SMTEs to more effectively represent the region. In this case, 1% of the value of each transaction is apportioned to the visitors centre, which funds its operation and that of the portal.
Leadership, vision, and the motivation from a champion was critical to the development of the portal and its subsequent success. The pioneering champion understood the industry and developments therein, being a boundary spanner and networking within and beyond the industry. This generated exposure to developments in IT, tourism, and the consumer behaviour of the tourist, which are reflected in the portal.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORTAL
The approach to the portal has been a progressive or iterative one. Early collaboration occurred manually—the establishment of off-line processes was important in that they could be replicated online once the decision to go online was made. This evolution has been important to the success of the system and the development of processes, relationships, and the region itself.
There have been three systems preceding the Bookeasy system that support the present portal. The first was Clippa in 1991, then in 1994 Travel with Windows was adopted.
In 2000, Queensberry Information Technologies Pty Ltd came to the region and a fully booked system was installed and used for a 12-month period. In 2001 a Web site and an off-line booking system were introduced, however, it was realised there was a need to go online and so fully integrate the system.
The portal has been in existence for around 3 years. The achievement of time and cost savings, and the ability to manage and attract increased tourist volumes—especially since growth was at around 10% pa—were important to the system being introduced. Backend bookings were quite labour intensive and their automation was important in the decision to go online.
The Tourist Association saw the huge opportunities that going online presented.This required a cohesive picture of the region and so required a comprehensive membership base with accurate information that was responsive to the market, which increasingly was becoming international. Effectively the portal provides a consolidated view of the region and its product and provides the visitors centre a mechanism to manage inventory, the product, and image of the region and convey this to the market. It also provides a way to deal with distressed Web sites. A recent feature to the portal has been a section offering deals to clear inventory that is close to expiration.
Critical to the success of the portal was the identification of the benefits of collaborating around IT. For SMTEs, this became apparent after some time. Also, it was important for SMTEs to think about what motivates visitors to come to Margaret River enabling SMTEs to see past their own business and understand the need to represent the destination in a cohesive way. Once this realisation and vision was achieved, the need to collaborate became clear.
Collaboration via membership has meant that SMTEs have had to invest in IT—purchasing computers, linking into broadband and an ISP, and input inventory data daily to the Web site. Most members were not e-commerce adopters at the time of joining but have realised the need to do so in order to obtain the benefits from membership and have accepted this. Assistance and training is given to help SMTEs to set up and upload information online and in some instances, members have assisted other members as required.
MEMBERSHIP AND SOCIAL IDENTITY
The decision to become a member therefore is based on the realisation that success depends on success of the region. Also an understanding of the consumer behaviour of the tourist—and their increased use of the Internet in their travel decision making—is influential in fostering membership and in encouraging SMTEs to adopt e-commerce. Markets are becoming more dispersed and SMTEs began to realise they could not effectively reach this market on their own or alternatively they would have to upload information to many sites updating inventory, price information, etc. for each site. In this way, membership was seen as an effective and efficient way to be known in the marketplace.
The collaboration between the members and their willingness to share data re occupancy rates, price, etc. has been critical to the success of the portal. This reflects the importance of relationships via membership of the Tourist Association. At the heart of the portal is the centralisation of inventories, which are managed via the visitors centre. The collaboration that exists between members has developed as the region has matured and as SMTEs realize their success depends upon the success of the region itself—reflecting the importance of social identity (Rowe, Burn, & Walker, 2005) and social or relational capital.
Figure 1. Home page of Margaretriver.com
The Margaret River TouristAssociation is unique because it is asset based—the caves and lighthouse located in the region are collectively owned by the region, creating cohesion between SMTEs located there, acting as a drawcard to the region. This has been an important catalyst to the coalescence of SMTEs further enhancing social identity.
RELATIONSHIP QUALITY: TRUST AND COMMITMENT
When the system first went online there was some concern regarding how information would be accessed and used, however this has dissipated due to the relationships and trust developed between members and the visitors centre. The organisational culture present in the visitors centre and the open approach of the committee that manages the centre has been central to the development of that trust.
Provision of information to members is important to increase their knowledge and to keep them apprised of developments, special campaigns, etc. Information is provided to members at meetings, online, or via e-newsletter keeping them involved and informed. This results in a confidence in and trust of the system and relationships develop as members see themselves as part of the region, participating in marketing campaigns promoting the region.
Trust builds as members have confidence in the Tourist Association and visitors centre and as they see the benefits of joining and participating. Trust therefore comes from relationships as they develop over time, as the system works for the benefit of businesses, and as tangible results are experienced. Trust further engenders commitment to membership and participation.
THE FUTURE
Margaret River was the first visitors centre in Australia to adopt an online booking system. As the virtues of the system become apparent, other regions are similarly adopting the Bookeasy system. One example of this is the recent adoption of the system by the Cape Naturaliste Tourist Association, a geographically close neighbour of Margaret River. Since the systems are interoperable information only needs to be updated once, which greatly benefits members. In the past, rivalry between associations such as Cape Naturaliste and Margaret River, has resulted in cannibalisation; however, collaboration has served to smooth out relationships.
The future indicates continued success of Margaretriver. com since it holistically represents the Margaret River region. The brand is an effective one and the Web site enables international tourists to plan and book accommodation and activities in advance. Further roll out of the Bookeasy system that underpins the Margaretriver.com site is occurring as the benefits to SMTEs and regions becomes apparent. This will further facilitate interoperability between various tourist destinations.
It is likely that adoption of this system in other regions will replicate the success of Margaretriver.com. It is important to note however, the presence of critical factors to c-commerce and the preceding discussion as to their existence in relation to this success. Without trust and commitment, formation and development of relationships between participants, an open culture, willingness to participate and share information, and the development of a social identity as discussed, success may not be assured.
One issue of concern is that of ongoing cannibalisation within the southwest region of Western Australia. While proliferation of SMTE Web sites has been addressed via the portal, the broader region itself is represented via numerous portals such as mysouthwest.com.au—an initiative of the Western Australia government in conjunction with the South West Development Commission and albanygateway.com.au, a Networking the Nation initiative under the auspices of the City of Albany and the Great Southern. As well as being a duplication of resources, the tourist is left wondering which site best represents the region. Also individual SMTEs are required to update occupancy information etc on various sites with potential for errors or omissions. Since cross portal activities are complex and impractical in the absence of common ontologies these issues remain.
With respect to the potential introduction of a recom-mender system, Rabanser & Ricci (2005) believe that the brokerage model is a suitable base for their introduction. Recommendation technologies have emerged as solutions to overcome the issue of “information overload” the tourist faces. The alignment of destination information with the booking facility is something that Margaretriver.com could consider in the future to further converting destination search into actual bookings online.
CONCLUSION
Portals offer substantial benefits to users and in the case of tourism destinations, to the community and region, as well as to individual businesses. This article serves to identify factors important to the success of a portal as illustrated via Margaretriver.com. It points to the need for other factors to be present to ensure successful collaboration around IT, in addition to purely IT issues.
It is considered that lessons are able to be learned from success stories such as Margaretriver.com as well as less successful examples of portals and collaborations around IT. Also since environments surrounding portals vary replication of the success of one portal may not automatically occur elsewhere. Analysis of these factors, both internal to the portal and external to it, is important so that decision-making surrounding future endeavours is well informed.
KEY TERMS
Collaborative Commerce (C-Commerce): Generally speaking, collaborative commerce (c-commerce) consists of all of an organisation’s information and communication technologies (ICT) bases, knowledge management and business interactions with its customers, and suppliers and partners in the business communities in which it interacts.
Collaborative Networks: Collaborative networks are collaborative relationships that firms enter into with their competitors for strategic reasons. They may take many forms and include c-commerce.
Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce): Business to business electronic commerce includes supply chain management, virtual alliances, virtual trading partners, disintermediation, and reintermediation. It is the use of IT, particularly the Internet, to facilitate trading between two or more firms.
Portal: A portal is a Web site used to find and gain access to other sites. They provide a single point of access through a Web browser to a range of information located on the Internet.
Small and Medium Tourism Enterprises (SMTEs): An SMTE is a small business that operates in the tourism industry. What is considered to be an SME varies according to country. In Australia, there are several size definitions for SMEs—micro-businesses employ less than five employees, small businesses employ less than 20, and medium less than 200 employees. Definitions of what constitutes an SME by the Australian Bureau of Statistics exclude agriculture since the number of employees tend to be small, however turnover may be significant. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) does include agricultural enterprises in their definition of SMEs as enterprises with less than $400,000 per annum turnover. Variation in definitions needs to be borne in mind when reviewing literature from around the world given the different size classifications.
Social Identity: Social identity theory is concerned with the importance of the social self, which contrasts with the individual self. Social identity approaches consider membership of groups and their impact on self-concept—who they are and how they differ from others. For SMTEs, the proprietors’ self-concept and that of the business relates not only to the experiences and accomplishments of the organisation but also the groups to which the proprietor (and so by extension the SME) belongs.
