The Client
The Challenge
The town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, in Ontario, Canada, often called the loveliest town in Ontario, has a long and distinguished history. Set on the site of the old Neutral Indian village of Onghiara, it was settled at the close of the American Revolution by Loyalists coming to Upper Canada, many of whom had been members of the much feared Butler’s Rangers based during the American Revolution at Fort Niagara, then under British control.
This town is one of the top tourist destinations in Canada, and as such, is home to hundreds of Bed & Breakfasts, hotels, and other forms of accommodations. The Niagara-on-the-Lake Chamber of Commerce was looking for a fast, easy to use, and stable solution to permit people planning their vacations to be able to search for the types of accommodations they needed and book and pay for them online. In addition, they were looking for a solution that would permit individual property owners to be able to manage their reservations without direct involvement of the Chamber’s staff.
The client was also looking for a solution that would allow their staff to maintain the content of the site without having to go and get a degree in Computer Science first, and wanted to showcase the various businesses, attractions, and events that the town offers throughout the year. This meant being able to provide more than just booking and accommodations services -- we needed to be able to easily show what events were available, allow visitors to purchase tickets to events, and provide the Chamber staff with tools that would allow relatively non-technical people to manage everything in an easy to use manner.
The Approach
Initial assessment of this project indicated that traffic patterns on the site would be relatively high throughout the months leading up to the tourist season, and would hit several thousand simultaneous users for extended periods throughout the day. It also indicated that visitors to the site would be coming from all over the world, with both the latest and greatest technology, and older, less sophisticated browsers. Thus, the site needed to take advantage of the latest technologies, while degrading gracefully with older systems.
The client had extensive experience dealing with bookings and reservations, and in assisting potential visitors with planning their stay in the town. It was necessary to follow the existing processes that Chamber staff used in dealing with tourists, while at the same time making as much of the planning process as simple as possible for visitors to the site.
Finally, the individual property owners had to have access to a range of tools that made managing their properties, customers, and reservations as painless as possible.
The Solution
Using our application framework, vMaintain, as a starting point, we implemented a multi-tiered application that addressed all of the client’s needs. The resulting site,
www.niagaraonthelake.com, allows the client to maintain the content of their site, to sell tickets, book accommodations, and communicate with their membership with ease. During peak times, the site delivers more than fifty million pages per month without difficulty. The application has become the primary tool that the Chamber uses to manage its membership, deal with tourists, and handle all billing, reporting, and membership management functionality.
Individual property owners now use the site as their "virtual office," and can manage their reservations, customers, and reporting requirements.
Visitors to the site are able to search for accommodations with ease, and can even specify their preferences, such as whether or not the room has a fireplace, is the property historic, etc.
