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Bonjour Québec.com – E-Business Case Study
Publication Date: June 2004
Introduction
What should we see? What should we do? Where should we stay? To obtain
personalized advice to help you plan a visit to Quebec or to obtain brochures
by mail, simply access Quebec's official tourism Web site, Bonjour Québec.com.
Each month, thousands of travellers visit the site to obtain information,
plan their visits to Quebec and make reservations. The site is accessible
the world over. Bonjour Québec.com hosts the biggest repository
of information and tourist images devoted to Quebec. Everything is presented
simply and attractively, from roadhouses to five-star inns. Users have
access to efficient search tools. The photographs show travellers tourist
attractions and hotels throughout Quebec.
Bonjour Québec.com is truly a successful portal for the Canadian
tourism industry. It stems from a partnership between Bell Canada, Tourisme
Québec and the ministère du Tourisme du Québec. While
experts in Tourisme Québec's network of tourist information centres
answer travellers' questions free of charge seven days a week, in person,
in writing or by telephone, the Bonjour Québec.com Web site offers
tourists another source of information. Bonjour Québec.com includes
a database management system and a reservation system.
Bonjour Québec.com's mission is to promote the development of
Quebec's tourism industry. To this end, resources and efforts focus on:
- guiding and coordinating public- and private-sector initiatives in
the area of tourism;
- encouraging and supporting the development of tourism products; and
- ensuring the promotion of Quebec and its tourism products.
Context and Favourable Conditions
- Bonjour Québec.com stems from a partnership between Tourisme
Québec and Bell Canada. Its success is attributable to a combination
of the partners' characteristics. Tourisme Québec is a dedicated
government department that maintains tourism offices and has developed
databases over the years. Bell Canada has considerable technological expertise
and experience as a prime contractor in the realization of major technological
projects.
- Tourisme Québec was reviewing its promotional initiatives.
It did not have the necessary funds and was seeking a solid partner that
could invest over the long term in a major technological project that entailed
significant risks.
- Project managers did not want short-term solutions. For example,
Travellinks, a former subsidiary that Bell had abandoned, did not have
an operating model that satisfied the needs of the Bonjour Québec.com
project.
- While the promotional budget in 2000 decreased, the funds earmarked
for information technologies increased considerably.
- Throughout the year, Tourisme Québec's sweeping media campaign
brought Bonjour Québec.com to the attention of travellers in Quebec,
Canada and the northeastern United States.
Development Phases
Bonjour Québec.com underwent several formal and detailed development
phases. In particular, a number of studies focussed on the administrative
and technological facets of the project. It took nearly 18 months to build
the partnership, during which time several meetings were held in order
to structure and establish a new operation that was common to both parties.
Bell Canada subsequently appointed four subcontractors to act as the
project's principal contractors. Today, none of the subcontractors is part
of the project. Indeed, these suppliers were unable to meet the deadlines
and requirements of the project and to cope with the uncertainty surrounding
it.
Bonjour Québec.com did, however, benefit from the technological
enhancements already made at Travellinks. This concept, despite its many
limitations, had enabled Bell Canada to develop solid core skills and to
take advantage of a learning curve suited to the development of Bonjour
Québec.com. Travellinks did not have a satisfactory search engine.
Strategic Scope
1. Scope of Functionalities and Services
- The site offers an information function intended for travellers from
different parts of the world who plan to visit Quebec. Dynamic mapping,
such as geographic cross-referral, makes it possible for individuals to
pinpoint a region or specific neighbourhood. This function is more effective
than simply making road or geographic maps available. The site also provides
photographs of locations in Quebec, activities, accommodation and restaurants.
Travellers also have access to an online travel library.
- The site offers a reservation function. Travellers can reserve accommodation,
activities, theatre tickets or restaurants online.
- The site's customer service function relies on a customer relationship
management approach. The site counsels tourists on how to reach a tourism
advisor by telephone or how to locate the nearest tourism centre in order
to talk directly with an advisor.
- Bonjour Québec.com also offers services to the businesses
that are displayed on the site. In addition to enabling them to present
a fact sheet with photographs and a logo, Bonjour Québec.com offers
them an inventory management and Internet reservation service through its
extranet and tailor-made customer service via Bell's Resources Centre.
- Since June 2003, Bonjour Québec.com has sent all of its subscribers
a monthly newsletter announcing current promotions and package deals.
- Since January 2003, travellers using the Internet have been able
to purchase tickets online for Quebec cultural and sporting events and
for airline travel to Quebec. In keeping with their mission to facilitate
the demand for Quebec tourist products, Tourisme Québec and Bell
Canada have concluded agreements with Admission and Travelprice.
2. Market Scope
Bonjour Québec.com does not seek to achieve specific segmentation
in a particular group of travellers. It has been noted that Americans are
the consumers who are most at ease with the site and the most frequent
users of Bonjour Québec.com for the purpose of making reservations.
3. Geographic Scope
From a geographic standpoint, Bonjour Québec.com is the principal
portal for the tourism industry in Quebec, and anticipates undertaking
similar developments in the other Canadian provinces and other industrialized
nations to enable partners to take advantage of its expertise.
4. Scope of Skills
Bonjour Québec.com combines three key facets of Tourisme Québec's
services ( i.e. the database, tourist offices and call centres).
Bell Canada acts as the prime contractor in respect of major technological
projects.
Four technology providers played an active role in the first phase of
the project's development.
Key Success Factors
- Over the past 10 years, the partners that implemented this initiative
have developed specific, complementary skills. Both of them have, in this
time, learned a great deal about the travel and tourism market.
- Businesses register free of charge on the portal. Similar experiences
where a fee is charged for registration have shown that the initiative
fails insofar as the portal's database is insufficient to offer a worthwhile
alternative to the traditional paper-based network.
- In the context of similar projects, businesses generally register
themselves in the system, which leads to numerous distortions and inaccuracies
in the information disseminated by the system. In the long run, such a
practice discredits the overall system by providing inaccurate or false
information. At Bonjour Québec.com, the approach used has made it
possible to standardize the information provided since Bonjour Québec.com
enters the data and ensures the uniformity of the data. Bonjour Québec.com
does not, however, verify the quality of the language used in the information
submitted by the businesses.
- The development of a multi-access approach offering a different configuration
that complements information channels that already reach travellers has
contributed to the initiative's success. Bonjour Québec.com, the
tourist information offices and the call centres are complementary services.
They are intended to optimize various channels rather than to favour Bonjour
Québec.com as a channel reserved for a group of travellers in a
particular segment.
- The organization of information needed to make reservations in light
of the destination directly competes with the private reservation systems
of major hotelkeepers and agency reservations offices. Portals such as
Bonjour Québec.com are aimed at customers who plan to visit a specific
region.
- Data capture and the various functions in the system can be performed
in 99 languages. This is an innovative feature of Bonjour Québec.com
and one not found in Travellinks.
Barriers to Adoption
- Widespread scepticism and conservatism among businesses in the travel
and tourism industry as regards new technologies hampered the initiative's
success. It took longer than expected for travel agencies, hotelkeepers
and suppliers of services to subscribe to the project.
- It is in the best interests of businesses enjoying the spin-off
benefits from Bonjour Québec.com to avoid informing their competitors
of the reasons for their success. For this reason, recommendations by word
of mouth do not apply to Bonjour Québec.com.
- The inability of hotelkeepers to apply yield management to room pricing
is still a barrier to Bonjour Québec.com's success. Airlines use
this method to calculate the highest level at which a fare can be set.
The lack of expertise among hotelkeepers in this regard is hindering expansion
of the volume of business done with Bonjour Québec.com.
Creating Value
Several factors are contributing to value creation in the Bonjour Québec.com
e-business model, as indicated below.
1. Novelty
Bonjour Québec.com offers a new way to obtain tourist information.
Georeferencing, which consists of indicating directions for motorists from
their point of departure, and the search engine are the key innovative
aspects of Bonjour Québec.com. The site provides information on
accommodation, restaurants, activities and entertainment for all regions
of Quebec, according to the time of year. Photographs and maps are also
available.
2. Efficiency
Tourisme Québec has gained in efficiency since its mailing and
transaction costs in respect of travellers are lower than they previously
were for similar requests.
3. Complementarities
Bonjour Québec.com provides a service that complements the traditional
network of tourist information offices and call centres. Complementarity
and synergy also exist with the 55 private reservation sites of regional
organizations and federations that Bonjour Québec.com manages.
4. Lock-in
Travellers enjoy lower transaction costs in terms of energy and effort.
Moreover, the establishment of a database paves the way for consumer loyalty-building
initiatives using a customer relationship management (CRM) approach.
Performance Measurements
- Bonjour Québec.com measures its success by means of several
criteria, including Web traffic. It surpasses its two Canadian competitors.
BC Tourism is perceived as a system in need of a technological update and
Travellinks, as a technological system of the previous generation. Bell
abandoned Travellinks because of the model's limitations. Bonjour Québec.com
has made it possible to reduce the number of telephone requests by 30%.
- In March 2002, over 700 businesses were registered on the Bonjour
Québec.com site and more than 250 vacation packages were also offered
to tourists the world over.
- Bonjour Québec.com has reached between 8.5 million and 9 million
visitors, over 2 million of them in July 2003 alone. In comparison, BC
Tourism reaches only 3 million to 5 million travellers annually, while
the Ontario portal only distributes information without enabling users
to make reservations. Some 37% of the travellers reached by Bonjour Québec.com
come from Quebec, 33% from the United States, 17% from the rest of Canada,
and 13% from abroad.
- Moreover, 62% of Bonjour Québec.com's clientele is from outside
Quebec. It comes mainly from the United States and is acknowledged to make
extensive use of the Internet. Bonjour Québec.com has even surpassed
the American Automobile Association (AAA) as a reference source for travel
in the US.
- In December 2002, Tourisme Québec received two Boomerang awards
(in recognition of the work of the interactive communications industry
in Quebec) for its Bonjour Québec.com site.
- Tourisme Québec and Bell Canada also received the award for
the best Web site at the 26th Turin Tourism Film Festival in May 2002.
The world's top tourism Web sites compete at this prestigious festival.
Future Prospects
Bonjour Québec.com hopes to offer the other provinces and regions
in the industrialized nations its experience to assist in the development
of destination management systems.
Bonjour Québec.com offers reservation sites to regional organizations
while enabling them to preserve their identity. Bonjour Québec.com
already offers 55 reservation sites to organizations such as regional tourism
associations. These reservation sites are transparent and travellers do
not know that they are reserving with Bonjour Québec.com (they think
they are reserving through a regional tourism office).
The reservation sites will continue to pursue their development and
several agreements are being negotiated with regional and sectoral stakeholders.
Implications for the Development of E-business
- It is important to choose partners that complement each other but
that seek to attain a common objective.
- The partners should rely on experience gained through previous projects
and focus on a solid core of experience and expertise.
- They should not fear significant technological change and should
abandon outmoded technological solutions in favour of more advanced solutions.
Published in Partnership
This case study was prepared by CEFRIO as part of the project
"New E-business Models and SME Development", a project undertaken in cooperation
with Industry Canada, the National Bank of Canada, TELUS, CANARIE and Canadian
Heritage.
The research team included Mrs. Louise Côté, Professor
from HEC Montréal, Mr. Vincent Sabourin, Professor from the
Université du Québec à Montréal, and Mr. Michel Vézina,
Professor from HEC Montréal. The research team completed this case study at the end of January 2004. The opinions expressed in this case study do not necessarily
reflect those of Industry Canada and/or Canadian Heritage.
For more information, please go to the CEFRIO Web site — The Authority
on Information Technology Appropriation — at: www.cefrio.qc.ca/english/indexAccueil.cfm.
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