The goal was to ensure Chester & Cheshire is showcased as a first choice for business conferencing in the United Kingdom. The remit of Chester & Cheshire Conference Bureau is to increase the value and volume of business tourism that is brought into the destination. The website is the primary tool used when organizations are looking for and short-listing possible destinations.

They offer a full range of services, ranging from free venue finding to event management, all of which need to be showcased to the best ability through the website. The client required a sophisticated solution that allowed them to be seen as the best of breed whilst have a simple CMS tool that enabled them to keep the site updated and looking creatively fresh.

Chester & Cheshire Conference Bureau team (part of Visit Chester & Cheshire team) have no internal design or technical programming capabilities and so it was important that Prodo selected the best of breed solution for them, giving them access to intuitive tools with limited design constraints.

In addition, Prodo wanted to ensure that whichever system was used was extendable in terms of integrating existing software systems, in particular their Tourism Management System, and would allow scalability for future extensions.

The audit trail and flexibility of having different user permission levels and roles was critical in the choice of system. Because of the industry that the client is in the availability of a simple to use Calendar of Events and the ability to ask website visitors to complete an online poll was really appealing.

“Choosing Sitefinity for this project was really a no-brainer. Our technical team love its state-of-the-art capabilities, whilst our client loves its simplicity of use. And I love it because it really does showcase Prodo’s skills in providing best-of-breed technology to suit the client’s needs.” Pippa Adams, Managing Director, Prodo Ltd.

The Solution

A Microsoft .net website all built within Sitefinity. The Tourism Management System was successfully integrated using JSON. Sitefinity’s advanced URL rewriting capabilities were utilised to enable each venue/supplier (stored in the Tourism Management System) to have individual landing pages with proper SEO friendly URLs.

An enquiry “shopping basket” was also developed to allow an elegant solution for visitors to build a basket of venues/suppliers they are interested in. All enquires go directly back into the desktop based Tourism Management Systems.

“We loved the simplicity of the solution presented by Prodo and are thrilled with the end result, a site that is not only visually on-brand but also allows our team to update it simply, quickly and efficiently. We believe that our site is truly best-of-breed because it includes so many web 2.0 features, allowing visitor interaction and giving the users a real experience of the quality of service we offer” Donna Lund, E-media Manager, Visit Chester & Cheshire.

The Results

The site was very well received at the recent launch to Chester & Cheshire Conference Bureau members, made up of Cheshire’s most prestigious hotels, leisure and visitor attractions. The site provides a great user experience, allowing great interaction between the visitor and the organization, with online polls, events finder, spotlight on venues and opportunities to include advertising content for members.