A£50,000 on-line central reservations system has been added to the Jersey Tourism Web site to allow consumers to search for and book accommodation.
It is intended to run alongside an existing CRS, which has operated for five years, that enables people to book accommodation over the phone.
Business systems manager Paul Carpenter said price and availability information already supplied by 140 island hoteliers would be uploaded automatically to the Web site too.
He claimed this development would not cost hoteliers extra because the two systems work in exactly the same way.
Carpenter said the on-line facility, which has been developed with tour operator system supplier Chauntry Corporation, will also let operators check the availability of accommodation on the Web site.
He is willing to look at introducing on-line booking for tour operators if they are interested in the project.
“In the long term, it is possible that we could put special tour operators rates on the system,” he said. “We may even do it within six months.”
Jersey Tourism’s existing CRS system generated 7,000 bookings worth £1.2m in 1999. Carpenter forecast that volumes would be similar in 2000 but that 10% of the bookings would be made on-line.
Meanwhile, he is planning to introduce gateway pages in foreign languages on Jersey Tourism’s Web site this April in a bid to attract more overseas users.
“The number of brochure requests is dropping in Scandinavia as the number of hits to the site are rising,” said Carpenter.
He believes this trend is gradually reducing the cost of answering tourism enquiries, although he was unable to say exactly how much the tourist board was saving.
The site is at www.jtourism.com.