Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 31, 1995 TAG: 9510310070
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Virginia Tech has built a tourism information center on the information superhighway, enabling anyone in the world with a computer to plan a trip in the Old Dominion before leaving home.
A hiker can select a trail from a roster of interesting places, such as the Beartown Wilderness in Bland County. A family headed to Williamsburg can find out how much it will cost to visit Busch Gardens. Newcomers can get acquainted with the state by scanning descriptions of the people, economy and land.
Travel industry leaders from across the nation will see the system, called VISIT Virginia, for the first time today at the White House Conference on Travel and Tourism in Washington, D.C.
It was created in four months by seven students and several faculty members, a group that included representatives of the colleges of architecture, education, human resources and arts and sciences. State Division of Tourism officials quietly underwrote the project's $100,000 cost, with the money going to pay the students and buy equipment.
Its creators said the new system outperforms all existing computer services catering to tourists because of its speed, ease of use and completeness.
"This will be the hottest thing on the market," said Doug McAlister, executive director for Public Service Programs at Virginia Tech, who predicted copycats will duplicate VISIT, which stands for the Visitor Information System for the Interactive Traveler.
VISIT is a World Wide Web site, a collection of colorful pages of text, numbers and pictures that are available free to anyone over the Internet, a computer network with 30 million users worldwide. Each page fits on a computer screen.
While such a collection is also called a "home page," this one is more akin to a book because there are tens of thousands of individual pages about hikes, theme parks, museums, restaurants, art exhibits and more. The Internet address is http://www.virginia.org.
There is no charge to post information, and 70 tourism officials at visitor bureaus, government agencies and chambers of commerce around the state have been trained to add, correct and remove postings as needed. Tourism-related businesses can advertise on the system.
In July, state officials asked Tech to build Virginia a high-tech tool for luring tourists and provided the $100,000 grant. The project was kept secret to avoid embarrassment if it flopped and maximize the excitement if, as officials now believe, Tech really came up with something.
Virginia's first lady, Susan Allen, will unveil the system to 1,700 people at the convention, which is being held to draft a national tourism strategy.
When she starts a videotape showing what the system can do, the conventioneers will see Virginia Tech's prominently placed logo. Tech officials are not shy about describing the event as an important moment in the limelight for the university to strut its technological abilities.
For now, Tech will keep and maintain VISIT's computer brain - a $9,000 piece of hardware called a server, donated by Apple - and will try to add interactive features for booking a hotel room or reserving a rental car.
Within a year, information will be available in German, Spanish, French and Italian, Tech said.
Courting tourists with Internet messages is not new, but neither is it widespread. Of the thousands of tourism-related groups in the world, only 42 list home-page addresses with the International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus in Washington.
Tourism boosters like Internet marketing because no community is too small to participate. London's home page enjoys no greater visibility in cyberspace than that of Madison, Wis., because a computer user can access each with a few keystrokes.
"A small bed-and-breakfast can be on this and compete globally just like Disney," said Charlotte Reed, a specialist on economic development and tourism who directed the project with architecture instructor Andy Honaker.
Special features include an electronic note pad for storing excerpts of information such as phone numbers, ticket prices and directions. The note pad accepts personal messages typed by hand and can be saved on paper using a printer.
A click of a mouse changes the view from page to page, rather than the slower directional arrow keys that control many on-line systems. Fast-loading graphics also reduce waiting time, Tech officials said.
The state's tourism slogan is plastered across the top of every screen - "Virginia Is for Lovers," with a heart replacing the "V" in "Lovers." Ten top attractions, including Mabry Mill at Meadows of Dan and the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, receive prominent display.
The system, during a test run Monday, quickly showed that Beartown Wilderness is 5,609 acres of rugged, roadless backcountry, and furnished the history of Barter Theatre, where tickets once traded for produce. But it was clear that someone at Tech will need to keep an eye on the system - a list of stars who have performed on the Barter stage misspelled Ernest Borgnine.
by CNB