TIScover

The FAW is assigned with the technical realisation of the tourist information system TIScover, which is run by the TIS GmbH in Innsbruck, Austria since 1996. The FAW further promotes the integration of new technological challenges and requirements to the meanwhile very successful system. TIScover disseminates information account destination facilities by means of Internet and database technology. Its aim is to supply tourists with comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date tourist information and to encourage the purchase of certain tourist products. In order to meet these challenges TIScover supports four modules: Atlas: to navigate through tourist information. Booking: to set up complexly structured searches for available rooms, holiday packages... Reports: to get topical information on snow condition, water temperature, traffic... Magazine: to surf through a magazine of topical events and attractions. As frequent actualisation of the underlying tourist information is required, TIScover follows a decentralised maintenance approach on the basis of an Extranet. Each supplier of tourist information is able to update and extend his info and products directly, 24 hours a day. Currently, TIScover manages a database of about two gigabyte of data, more than 400.000 Web pages (composed of more than 1M files) covering among others 1.500 towns and villages and over 20.000 accommodations. The system has to handle up to 5 M page-views as well as up to 30.000 information and booking requests per month. Meanwhile five Austrian regions have joined TIScover. TIScover is used by the German company START Media Plus, a major player in the area of online reservation systems, to present tourist information about Germany (http://www.deutschlandreise.de). In Switzerland TIScover starts as KISSswiss, employed by Kümmerley + Frey and Basler Versicherungen.