A 3,600% surge in page views on the day a new website debuts would certainly qualify as a success, and validate a decision to perform a comprehensive revamp of the site. That success is what the Town of Banff and its partners enjoyed last Thursday when it unveiled its new website.

As anyone who has even a passing familiarity with websites knows, a comprehensive site redesign is a process not an event. They also know that visits, while critical, are only one success indicator for a site.

In Banff’s case, the process that culminated in its successful launch began a number of months ago when it set out to improve a site it knew was not working. In tackling this project, Banff had to achieve a goal that few other municipalities with under 10,000 residents would require: bringing a unique experience online.

Prescient was fortunate to be chosen as the partner to collaborate with Town and its partners on this project, which let me experience first-hand the qualities that had to be captured on the site.

That experience can best be summarized by the first day of one trip. Walking down Banff Avenue, I had a 360-degree view of the spectacular Canadian Rockies which, because the town sits in a national park, were unobstructed by commercial development. I paused to watch some kids from the local school playing soccer on a pitch by the school before bumping into several people I’d met on previous visits. And at the end of a meeting, I was invited to go canoeing, rock climbing and running. I opted for the run, after which I dined on Buffalo cheeks in a terrific restaurant.

Banff, in other words, provides unmediated access to one of the world’s most spectacular environments, which makes it an exciting place to visit. It also attracts residents who have a passion for enjoying that environment. They have a deep-rooted respect for the values of the national park, and are happy to disclose their knowledge of how to enjoy the Rockies. They also appreciate that sharing the town and park with visitors is a reality of living in one of the world’s premier tourist destinations.

Research on the old website resulted in a number of key findings, with one emerging strongly: visitors wanted to understand what made Banff special, and residents wanted to see their experience of the town and park reflected on the site.

This research played a vital role in driving the process that resulted in last week’s launch. In addition to the spike in visits, Banff’s webmaster Kevin Elliott cites a number of features that have resulted in the site’s positive reception by town residents:

• There’s a lot of information on the site, and it’s easy to find thanks to an intuitive Information Architecture and other navigation aids.
• The look-and-feel incorporates many images of Banff and conveys the Banff experience online.
• The acquisition of a Content Management System (CMS) means town staff can up-date information in minutes instead of hours.
• There’s good information for visitors, but residents can still find the information they need easily.
• The weather appears prominently on the home page.

Another excellent feature, one that enables the residents to share their passion for enjoying the Rockies, is “what the locals do”. It means one doesn’t have to step into a Banff watering hole to learn the best way to experience the town and park from the people who know it most intimately.

You’d be hard pressed to find a better win-win-win relationship between consumers, an industry and technology than the travel market post-Internet adoption.

Of course, these gains could only be accomplished after the players got their strategy right.

There can be no doubt that the Internet is the technological backbone of the travel industry. According to Claria Corporation’s Feedback Research Division:

§         88 percent of consumers purchased or plan to purchase an airline ticket online, up from 50 percent in 2004.

§         Online purchases of hotel accommodations also increased in this year to 52 percent, up from 40 percent in 2004.

A quick examination suggests that the Internet and travel are nearly as good a combination as a pina colada and a palm tree:

• Tourism is an information intensive industry. The Internet provides technology that enables constant up-dating of information based on customer input, changes in product availability and price changes.
• Tourists cannot really assess the quality of the products or services they are buying until they arrive at their destination. Trust and proof statements are critical for delivering the comfort level required to commit an often significant percentage of household income to a purchase. The Internet delivers technology that makes it easy to compare choices, delivers immediate confirmation and documentation of reservations and builds a relationship between the buyer and seller.
• Tourists are strongly motivated by price. The Internet enables electronic order processing that dramatically reduces sales costs; automation scales back skilled labour costs; it disintermediates several layers of middle man; and it reduces the cost of physical space.

The Financial Times provides a number of examples of how the players have all won as a result:

• Consumers: Not only has informed choice risen steeply and costs declined, holiday travelers are enjoying tremendous flexibility: holidaymakers used to be restricted to 7- or 14-day holiday periods; now the average length of stay is 4.8 days.
• The industry: despite tremendous challenges, the U.S. Internet travel industry grew from US$5 billion in sales in 1999 to US$20 billion in 2003, a number that is still growing dramatically.

So what were the winning strategies?

• Rethinking the product offering. With consumers using the Internet to buy flights, accommodation and rental cares separately rather than in packages, tour operators responded by either diversifying into specialists holidays and upscale breaks, or creating sites that allowed customers to choose component parts.
• Creating an Internet-specific business model. Lastminute.com, Expedia and Travelocity buy travel products  and use the Internet to find buyers.
• Dramatically increasing efficiency. The winners have learned to process large numbers of orders and inquiries with less human intervention. Not only does this approach drive cost out of the system, it allows them to collect extensive customer data which they utilize to create a better product.