Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC)
Online Bookings Hotel, Auto Rental, Plane,
Special Event Reservations


Overview:
Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC)

The Virginia Tourism Corporation has partnered with Virginia Interactive and World Choice Travel (Travelocity) booking network to provide online hotel reservation capability on the Virginia.org web site. The service will soon be expanded to include online auto rentals, flight reservations, and even special event reservations such as package cruises or entertainment packages. In addition, VTC and Virginia Interactive will be working to bring the technology into “widgets” allowing the service to be quickly and easily shared on any website including the Official Commonwealth Portal, other agency and local government sites, and personal web pages like iGoogle, My Yahoo, and personal blogs.


Description:

Travelers browsing Virginia.org can not only research and find interesting places to visit in Virginia but now they can book a hotel near their chosen travel destinations without ever leaving the site. Users may search hotels in several ways including by availability, most popular, price, rating, hotel name, and even features like free parking, internet, pet friendly and wheelchair accessible. This service is a welcome addition to the Virginia.org website making the travel planning process simple and convenient for users.



Benefits:

  • Time 
    Added customer convenience – Before the online booking service was available on the website, users could locate accommodations but had to either call or leave Virginia.org to search room availability and make reservations on the websites of their chosen hotels. Now users can check availability and book online without ever leaving Virginia.org.

  • Money 
    Web traffic retention – Since users no longer have to leave Virginia.org to make reservations, they are more likely to stay on the site and continue looking at additional destinations, events, and attractions. This serves to strengthen the site as a travel resource and increases the amount of return customers. Virginia.org essentially becomes a one stop travel shop for Virginia travelers. 

    Increased marketing with Web 2.0 – Through the use of “widgets’ or sharable mini-applications, the booking service can be easily made available in spaces with huge audiences that would be otherwise impossible to leverage. For example, a Facebook user may place the Virginia booking widget on their Facebook page where their friends can see it and easily add it to their own Facebook page or blog or any number of other sites. Given the vastness and popularity of online social networking, this “self pollination” or “viral marketing” has potentially unlimited value and often unexpected benefits.  

  • “Green”
    Find “green” hotels – With the additional capability to search hotels by Virginia Green certification status, visitors interested in doing business with only environmentally friendly business, will be able to quickly search, find, and reserve rooms with only those hotels that have obtained Virginia Green certification.


Links:

Virginia.org Online Bookings page: http://www.virginia.org/wct/

 


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Phone: (804) 786-4718 | Toll Free: 1-877-4VA-EGOV (1-877-482-3468)