Tourism NSW is the peak body for the one of the largest industries in Australia’s most populous State.  Its charter is to promote the brand “New South Wales” as the destination of choice for domestic and overseas visitors.

With thousands of players in the industry, capturing and presenting online what NSW has to offer as a destination has been an enormous task. Individual organisations have needed to build their own databases, employ expensive developers to create and update incompatible websites, or rely upon inadequate low bandwidth hosting environments.

Netcat solution

Tourism NSW (TNSW) in association with Netcat.biz is using Netcat web content management software to revolutionise one of Australia’s largest and most important industries: Tourism.

Within a few months, Tourism NSW and other tourism bodies spread across NSW will use a single database, web content management publishing system and hosting environment to manage travel content in Australia’s most populous State. They will also be able to publish material to the Tourism Data Warehouse and their own sophisticated and highly functional websites (and mini-websites).

Why Netcat?

Ease of use

Above all, Tourism NSW selected Netcat WCM for its ease of use. With hundreds of users with varying degrees of skill, it was essential that the chosen application required minimal training and configuration.

Netcat WCM enables non-expert people in the regions (with only MS Word and mouse experience), to publish the latest Accommodation, Attractions, Events, Tours and Destination Information.  The material is stored in the data warehouse.

This also lowers costs by removing the impost on the head office to support these operators.

Unique top down and bottom up approach

From a central perspective, Tourism NSW’s data warehouse, in concert with Netcat Content Management software, manages the massive content and data infrastructure for the industry. 

At the local level, Netcat mini-websites are available in configurations to suit any Travel organisation’s budget.  They democratise publishing by devolving responsibility for content to the regions and operators.

Real time data updates

Netcat WCM solves one of Tourism NSW’s biggest challenges – ensuring information on products, events and pricing is always up to date.

Historically, this content has been created, collected and stored haphazardly in numerous formats and databases by thousands of tour operators, local councils, visitor information centres, regional tourism organisations and tourism affinity groups across the state. 

Through its use of a virtual knowledge store and dynamic home pages, Netcat WCM ensures that this information is always up to date. As soon as an operator anywhere in the state changes a piece of data in their site, this change is uploaded to the Tourism NSW site.

Consolidation of multiple disparate sites

Netcat WCM enables Tourism NSW to unite the resources of countless Tour Operators, Local Councils, Visitor Information Centres, Regional Tourism Organisations and tourism Affinity Groups across NSW.   Each tourism organisation can take advantage of a scalable "world-class" website, confident in the knowledge that these will be consistent & compatible sites, feature-rich, highly functional and offering high-level bandwidth at low cost.

Powerful search

Using Tourism’s powerful search application, consumers can search by Product, Location or Experience.   Through Netcat, these results are presented on-line, professionally within pre-defined templates.

Best of breed

The initiative combines the benefits of Tourism NSW’s Data Warehouse initiative with Netcat Content Management and Mini-website software.  Both applications reside on AC3’s impressive hosting facilities at the Australian Technology Park.

Benefits to Tourism NSW

• Key results achieved to date include:
• Content is now owned by the regions, yet still centrally managed
• Information is updated more frequently, ensuring potential visitors have access to the most current products and pricing,
• There is now a clearer structure to the information making it far easier to find what you need on the system
• Training and support costs have been significantly reduced