//venice>connected

Acronym of the case:

//venice>connected

Web address of the case:

http://www.veniceconnected.com/

Country of the case:

Italy

City/region:

City of Venice / Veneto Region

Posting Date:

10 December 2009

Last Edited Date:

11 December 2009

Author:

Paola Ravenna (City of Venice)

Tourism Economy competitiveness and sustainability | improve public/private cooperation | high quality user centric ICT based services

Type of initiative

Project or service
Network
Strategic initiative

Case Abstract

In the last few years, one of the priorities of the City of Venice administration has been to increase the scale and impact of Innovation in order to improve public services and related policies. On the basis of this strong commitment, Venice has promoted a lot of actions to develop high quality ICT-based services. In this frame, the City has launched the "//venice>connected" initiative in order to foster competitiveness and sustainability of Tourism Economy thus also better responding to increasing global competition.

Tourism in fact represents one of the main resources for the City's economy and job offer, but there is the need to better manage and regulate tourist flows, coordinate the different players more efficiently and promote balance between autonomous development and regional/local needs.

"//venice>connected" is a new integrated platform for tourism flows management, directly controlled by the City of Venice, consisting on an innovative online booking process of main public services (such as museums, transports, parking and wi-fi) with reduced fares. Pricing strategies have been defined in order to encourage booking in advance and reduce negative effects of season peeks.

Main objectives of the //venice>connected project are therefore the following:

To foster the sustainable development of Tourism Economy by trying to limit the negative effects of seasonality (economic sustainability).
To establish ICT-based methods for estimating tourist flows in advance in order to offer better and more various services (social sustainability).
To provide better services to tourists as well as to ensure better living conditions for residents.
To foster the implementation of ICT-based flow management systems and arrivals trend analysis
To face dis-intermediation risks and foster the coordination role of public administration.
To reduce the burden of PA procedures and improve cooperation and dialogue between public sector and private actors.
To promote the City less known sights and the related economic activities.

Benefits

The long term benefits of the //venice>connected project will be in having a full understanding of the incoming tourist flows and direct them accordingly to the town absorbing potential. The benefits will be therefore shared by all the parties involved in Venice's Tourism Economy: the city will better preserve its cultural heritage and will be able to promote less known areas; tourists, beyond the price advantages, will enjoy a less crowded site seeing; Venetians residents will not experience a congested historical center; the City's administration and private actors will optimise the supply of services, according to the visitors' presences.

Impact

The impact will be in creating a levelling-off of the tourism flows during the year, according to the City sustainability index and season peeks - sustainability levels have been identified and are monitored by COSES (Consortium for Research and Educational Training). This project has been managed in coordination with the various parties active in the Venice's Tourism Economy (hotels, public services, transport operators, museums etc) and represents the first chance for a visitor to purchase all these different services in one web site and with a single transaction.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Sector

Customs | Internal market | Local/Regional Community Development | Other

Start date - End date

February 2009 (Ongoing)

Date operational

February 2009

Target Users

Target Users Description

The e-commerce platform //venice>connected is mainly addressed to tourist users, and also to a range of one-day visitors which are particularly significant for the project targets and for the sustainable and competitive Tourism issue.

Since its launch on February 1stÂ 2009 up to June 4th, the web site //venice>connected has registered 224Â 963 visitors, 65.75% of which are new, with a daily average of approximately 1 500. During the month of May 2009, there have been calculated 50Â 756 visitors. From the high number of pages surfed (9.56 page visualization average) and the low rebound frequency (19.30%), it seems clear that the customers who use //venice>connected are highly motivated to buy the services offered.The catchment's composition is international, the main users' nationalities being, in particular, French, US, German, British and Spanish. 97 are the total languages used so far. The profile of the current users of the e-commerce platform by the City of Venice seems to be identified in a specific cluster of long-term visitors, which proves to be very interesting for enhancing and improving the sustainability of the relation between visitors and residents. The aim of these users is to schedule their visit, their holiday, their travel, with a booking period that may vary from last minute to an advance booking. Long stay services are the best-sellers products: more than half of the amount of services supplied (61.1%) are split: 7 days public transport ticket (21.1%), 72 hours public transport ticket (19.5%); museum pass all civic museums (12.8%).

Furthermore, the //venice>connected project ambition is to promote Venice's huge and highly potential cultural offer under a unique distribution chain, allowing and supporting the major Venetian cultural institutions and foundations (ca. 10-15) such as Peggy Guggenheim Collection, La Biennale di Venezia Foundation, Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana Museums to reach a wider range of customers through this web portal and promote their packages.

In addition, the //venice>connected project is oriented to use the platform on a business to business support venture, acting as an instrument to promote collaboration and integration within the various parties involved in the Tourism Economy. At this stage, several operators has shown their interests in using this portal to explore business and partnership opportunities for the Venice area, such as national and international tourist operators (from Canada to Spain) and local private industry associations..

The //venice>connected project also aims to become the main instrument for educational trips organization in Venice. It has been therefore decided to promote the services provided towards at least 20 school districts and other educational institutions, informing them of the opportunity to organize school trips in Venice through the web site.

The //venice>connected project would like to act as a partner for the major European and International Tourism Promotion institutions, in order to create a connection between Venice and other cities through the integration of the respective on-line booking platforms and the promotion of combined offer of services.

Scope

International | Local (city or municipality) | National

Status

Operation

Language(s)

English | French | German | Spanish

Policy Context and Legal Framework

In line with the EC Communications "Agenda for a sustainable and competitive European tourism" and "A renewed tourism EU policy", Venice Connected project responds to the Lisbon Agenda challenges involving policy makers and stakeholders at EU, national, regional and local levels, in order to define Information Society Policies to drive productivity growth in a sustainable way, to stimulate innovation and to improve the competitiveness of EU economy. The project activities could encourage innovation contributing to unlock business potential, to adapt to globalization challenges and to extend the EU and international market. The City administration addresses the policy guidelines set out in the EC initiative "i2010", in particular improving digital economy ensuring better opportunities for job creation, quality of services and accessibility.

The project takes into account Gothenburg agenda and the needs for social and economic sustainability. Proper Information Society policies can in fact contribute to mobilize actors to share knowledge, to reduce seasonality and congestion, to maintain and enhance local community prosperity and quality of life. Furthermore, shared and coordinated policy frameworks can facilitate a better long term planning and the use of best available knowledge and solutions.

Venice has been working on the definition of a strategic framework based on innovation and web 2.0 philosophy.

Furthermore the city administration, through Venis SpA,Â its telecommunication and information company, started an innovative infrastructural project to deploy a broadband network with fiber optic and wireless technology.
This initiative will grant an enormous saving on data-transfer and telephony costs providing, at the same time, an innovative network to those who mobility of work. The most of the network will be deployed taking advantage of other existing infrastructures and optimizing the coverage with wireless technology.

Web 2.0 policy has been defined in an "innovation manifesto", which reflects some relevant guidelines for the administration: the network is the space of collective knowledge; web 2.0 generates a useful collaboration process among the users; citizens can become leading actors; productivity growth of public administration is based on collaboration processes; web 2.0 breaks conventional hierarchies; knowledge is the outcome of sharing.

Some new services have been set up in the last months believing that innovations are the driving force behind what will redefine and transform the modern cities, the public spaces and the working environments. The city has been defining a strategic framework called "digital citizenship", aiming at organizing new services in wireless metropolitan areas through integrated communication and collaboration technologies. The main projects are: Argos (Argos is a video-surveillance system for boat traffic monitoring, measurement and management), Baris (Boat Areas Research Information System), Iris (on-line service based on a portal aimed to connect citizens to the local authorities in order to guarantee the urban maintenance of street, green areas, public lighting and intervene on graffiti, irregular waste, irregular parking).

//venice>connected received the national award "Cittadinanza Digitale" (digital citizenship) in May 2009.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

IT infrastructures and products

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Standards-based technology | Mainly (or only) open standards | Open source software

Funding source

Public funding local

Project size

Implementation: €300-499,000

Yearly cost:

€49-299,000

Implementation and Management Approach

The City of Venice is directly managing and coordinating the //venice>connected project. A dedicated team (Sustainable Tourism Project Marketing Directorate) has been created with the aim of managing all the issues related to sustainable and competitive Tourism. This team is independent for the day to day decision-making process and relates directly to the Vice Mayor - in charge of ICT, R&D and Innovation policies and coordinator of the tourism board - for all institutional and strategic matters.
The partnerships are extendedÂ both to the public sectors providers, controlled by the city administration, and to tourism industry private actors. Furthermore, a partnership has been set up with several national and local promotional institutions (ENIT and APT Province of Venice).
The whole ICT infrastructure is managed by Venis SpA, a company fully owned by the City administration. Venis SpA is the limited company of the City of Venice Administration in charge of the deployment, the development and the technical management of the ICT network system. Its mission consists in realizing innovative networks, also as a support to the e-government services addressed to all those who live, study, work or visit Venice, even in mobility.

A flexible project organisation with appropriate administrative processes has been set up in order to facilitate:

a) Optimal decisions at principal strategic level, at overall project level and component/partner level.
b) Coordination and delivery ofÂ agreed technical activities and services.
c) Coordination ofÂ legal, contractual, ethical, financial and administrative management.

A risk management plan has been prepared and it will be continuously updated.

Technology solution

//venice>connected interface has been built using the Drupal open platform. This framework allows full content management with multiple language support. The CSS based layout allows accessibility and WAI specifications compliance.A large community working on Drupal project allows scalability and a faster and more efficient system and security upgrade.
The database system is based on Oracle and the communications between the front-end and back-end are performed by webservices.Several components such as 'payment module', 'incoming calendar' or 'services basket' are custom components developed with PHP web technology. This technology has been also used for Backoffice on on-site delivery system.
The whole system has been designed starting from tourists and citizens needs using focus group and user case studies approach integrated with the long experience gathered from previous tourist service experiences in the city.The right balance between open source framework and custom tools (mainly due to security issues and city's peculiarities) gives to the system the flexibility and power needed to perform thousand purchases every week.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

In only 4 months, //venice>connected project has already registered transactions corresponding to an amount of more than 1 million Euros. From the 1st of February to the 4th of June, the web platform was visited by 148Â 135 unique visitors (mainly from France, Germany and U.S.A.) and the number of visits is constantly increasing with an average of around 1Â 500 visitors a day.

Furthermore, requests from local private actors to participate in the project are so numerous that it has been necessary to develop a dedicated Directorate of the City of Venice in order to manage all the project implementation issues. At the same time, the project is receiving the interest of a lot of public bodies and institutions at a European level.

These figures demonstrate the big success the initiative is achieving so far. At the moment progresses of the project are analysed by COSES (Consortium for Research and Educational Training), a research study center for the City and Province of Venice, but Venis Spa - the company owned by the City of Venice in charge of the ICT development - is also studying ICT tools and solutions to constantly monitor customers' satisfaction according to the web 2.0 policy adopted by the City of Venice.

All the stakeholders involved will benefit from the project: the City will better preserve its cultural and architectural heritage and, at the same time, will be able to promote less known and visited sights; visitors, beyond the price advantages, will enjoy a less crowded site seeing; Venetian residents will not experience a congested historical center; the City's administration and private actors will be able to optimise the supply of services, according to the visitors' presences.

Track record of sharing

//venice>connected is not an isolated project, but is part of a big initiative promoted by the City of Venice to develop innovatiions in Â ICT policies, as stated in the "innovation manifesto" already mentioned. These policies face problems and issues similar to many other European countries and can be successfully transferred to other contexts since the technology solutions adopted are totally open source.

To promote exchange and transfer of good practices at EU level, in fact, the City of Venice submitted a project proposal named I-SPEED in the frame of the second Interreg IVC call for proposals. The overall objective of I-SPEED project is to enable regional and local authorities to foster competitiveness and sustainability of Tourism Economy and to respond to the increasing global competition developing and improving their ICT polices. The partnership is composed by 10 local and regional public authorities distributed all over the European territory that are developing ICT public services and have shown a big interest in the innovative initiatives Venice is carrying out in the frame of Tourism Economy.

The City of Venice is also actively participating to the Knowledge Society Forum (KSF) of the Eurocities network and presented //venice>connected in the last meeting held in Manchester at the end of March 2009. Furthermore, //venice>connected will be presented during the Shangai Expo 2010.

An operative collaboration with the Catalonia Tourism Board, which expressed interest in developing a project similar to //venice>connected, has recently started in order to create a connection between Venice and Barcellona though the integration of the respective on-line booking platforms and the promotion of combined offer of services.

Lessons learnt

The adoption of Information Society policies is able to underpin the Tourism Economy and can be transferred in different contexts.
Forecast and manage tourism flows allows local administrations and private operators to improve the quality and the profitability of the services provided.
A stakeholders involvement strategy should be defined in order to address the needs of the different users.
Tourists and residentsÂ are very well-disposed to initiatives that promote more sustainable tourism.
Integration and coordination of services offered by the public sector and the private actors in the frame of the Tourism Economy increases quality, skills and cost optimisation for both. Nevertheless the public administration has to find the more effective way to interact with other actors and be ready to create a flexible management structure.

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