CTS Viaggi

CTS (Centro Turistico Studentesco e Giovanile) belongs to some of the largest Italian organizations, dealing with the tourism.

CTS currently offers its services through more than 200 sales points. In addition to Italy, CTS is active also in France, Spain, Great Britain, and the USA.

CTS sells annually about 400 thousand tours. The company's annual turnover reaches the amount of Euro 150 million. The number of the company's clients reaches approximately 250 thousand.

CTS decided to support its business activities through the Internet in 1994. "We began with the Internet so early mainly because most of our clients are young people, and the Internet in Italy was at that time used mainly by the younger generation", Fabrizio Iacono, Web Department Manager of CTS, says. "CTS is a young company, being dynamically developed, which wants to be always one up on its competition, and wants to always offer its clients the best services."

CTS created its first firm website in 1994 in its own production. Later, in 1998, CTS began to cooperate with two external companies. One of the companies supplied a technological solution, and the other one provided for a graphical web solution.

Why did CTS decide for a new website?

CTS began to consider a new website immediately upon the establishment of a special Department for the support of web activities in 2000. By its establishment, CTS decided to significantly increase the quality of services being provided through the Web. In addition to the Web Department, employees of other Departments participate in the support of web activates - e.g., Call Centre employees provide for the processing of orders accepted through the Web. However, this site in the then existing form could not satisfy claims, related to new intentions of the development of company's web activities. F. Iacono talks mainly about problems with the navigation: "It was very perplexed, and the possibility to search was not integrated on the site either. The graphical design also no longer corresponded to the current trends. The biggest problem was probably the absence of the CMS (content management system), therefore we had to implement all changes on the site manually, or we had to contact an external company to make them for us."

The work on the first portal began by an analysis of the old one. Its result was the clarification of targets and needs of CTS, and the subsequent declaration of a tender for the supplier of a new website. Four companies - three Italian and Lomtec.com were invited for the tender. CTS was looking for companies looking for a company, which would be able to provide professional and complex services - graphical design, content management system, integration with enterprise applications, the subsequent support, etc.

The work on the development of the new portal for CTS commenced in July 2002. "From the initial phases, we have strictly observed the project methodology used, which begins by an analysis of client's requirements, continues by a design of specific solutions, implementation, testing, and launch of the project, and ends by an evaluation and support ", Miroslav Ličko, Solutions Director of Lomtec.com, says.

Main advantages of the new website include mainly the principal simplification of the website administration through the CMS of the ActiveWeb system and its integration with the existing back-end systems of CTS. "Now, we can administer the site content very quickly," F. Iacono says. "When compared to the past, we have a single system, where we can implement all tasks, related to the web site administration."

ActiveWeb allows to administer the complete website content through the so-called admin mode, which enables the work to be done extremely quick and flexibly. Currently, there are about 40 users, working with ActiveWeb in CTS, which are divided into several groups. Each group of users is responsible for any of the website's parts, e.g., products, requests, discounts, etc.

As regards the comparison of the website with other Italian tourism portals, it clearly occupies first place in terms of the scope of services, being provided. The new CTS portal set outs the widest offer of services and products, as well as, information about particular countries and cities. Through the new website CTS provides its clients with the support all over the world, as well as, the possibility to obtain discounts or send SMS messages through the website, and so much more. Almost 100,000 unique users visit the new CTS portal each month. However, from the business point of view, the information that CTS executes, through the portal, more than 1,000 orders per month in the amount of several hundred thousands Euro, is more important.

On the basis of extremely favorable responses from customers, CTS has expressed its satisfaction with the work of Lomtec.com and clearly decided to further continue their cooperation. "For the future, we are preparing an integration with our new economic information system and a connection to the international reservation system, Worldspan. We are also preparing a redesign of our foreign web sites in a similar manner as in the case of the Italian site."