The new official tourism website of the city of porto: promoting tourism and a wine destination

Abstract

The new website of the city of Porto (www.visitporto.travel), that started development in early 2010 and was activated in May 2011, functions as a tourism marketplace combined with an integrated information system for tourism. This is achieved by combining a series of tools and technologies that provide information and advice and support the acquisition of goods and services. Starting from the early stage of trip planning and remote access (telephone, SMS, email and web), proceeding to the arrival into the city and face to face interactions in e.g. tourist shops, combined with other means of self-information and acquisition of goods and services (e.g. PortoCard), supporting the visit all the way up to eventually leaving the city to visit other destinations, such as the vineyards of the Douro Valley, and coming back to Porto for the return journey, and finishing with the process of feedback and follow-up. This paper describes the rationale behind the creation of this website that intends to be a tourism gateway to the Metropolitan Area of Porto and Northern Portugal with special emphasis on the Douro Valley, and the experience behind the process of designing, implementing and rolling out the new portal, and adapting it to user feedback. Although the website is still under active development some parts of it are already considered to be a success. The most important result seems to be that the website is working as a rally point for the tourism ecosystem, fostering the development of synergies between the different players.