THE NEW OFFICIAL TOURISM WEBSITE OF THE CITY OF PORTO: PROMOTING TOURISM AND A WINE DESTINATION

: The new website of the city of Porto (www.visitporto.travel), that started development in early 2010 and was activated in May 2011, functions as a tourism marketplace combined with an integrated information system for tourism. This is achieved by combining a series of tools and technologies that provide information and advice and support the acquisition of goods and services. Starting from the early stage of trip planning and remote access (telephone, SMS, email and web), proceeding to the arrival into the city and face to face interactions in e.g. tourist shops, combined with other means of self-information and acquisition of goods and services (e.g. PortoCard), supporting the visit all the way up to eventually leaving the city to visit other destinations, such as the vineyards of the Douro Valley, and coming back to Porto for the return journey, and ﬁnishing with the process of feedback and follow-up. This paper describes the rationale behind the creation of this website that intends to be a tourism gateway to the Metropolitan Area of Porto and Northern Portugal with special emphasis on the Douro Valley, and the experience behind the process of designing, implementing and roll-ing out the new portal, and adapting it to user feedback. Although the website is still under active development some parts of it are already considered to be a success. The most impor-tant result seems to be that the website is working as a rally point for the tourism ecosystem, fostering the development of synergies between the diﬀerent players.

Este artigo descreve a lógica da criação deste sítio web que pretende ser uma porta de entrada do turismo para a Área Metropolitana do Porto e Norte de Portugal, com especial destaque para o vinho e o Vale do Douro; e descreve a experiência por trás do processo de conceção, implementação e operacionalização deste novo portal, e adaptação do mesmo em função do feedback dos utilizadores.
Palavra-chave: Vinho; Turismo; destino; TIC e Turismo Resumen: El nuevo sitio web de turismo de la ciudad de Oporto: la promoción del turismo y de un destino de vino El nuevo sitio web de la ciudad de Oporto (www.visitporto.travel),que comenzó a desarrollarse a principios de 2010 y se activó en mayo de 2011, funciona como un mercado turístico combinado con un sistema de información integrado para el turismo.Esto se logra mediante la articulación de una serie de herramientas y tecnologías que proporcionan información, asesoramiento y apoyo en la adquisición de bienes y servicios.Así, desde la fase inicial de planificación del viaje y del acceso remoto a la información (teléfono, SMS, correo electrónico y web), la llegada a la ciudad ofrece una interacción cara a cara, por ejemplo, en tiendas para turistas, junto con otros medios de auto-información y compra de bienes y servicios (por ejemplo, PortoCard) que apoyan la visita y la programación de la salida de la ciudad para conocer otros destinos, como los viñedos del Valle del Duero, y de vuelta a Oporto para el viaje de regreso concluir así el proceso de retroalimentación y seguimiento.Este artículo describe la lógica inherente a la creación del sitio web referido que pretende ser una puerta de entrada para el turismo en el Área Metropolitana de Oporto y Norte de Portugal, con especial énfasis en el Valle del Duero, y la experiencia integral de la concepción, implementación e implantación del nuevo portal, para adaptarlo a la retroalimentación del usuario.Aunque el sitio está todavía en desarrollo, algunos de sus componentes ya se consideran un éxito.El resultado más importante parece radicar en el hecho de que el sitio web está funcionando como un punto de encuentro para el ecosistema del turismo, impulsando el desarrollo de sinergias entre los diferentes agentes.

INTRODUCTION
growth in the region of Porto and Northern Portugal.The new portal was Porto's answer to the challenge of a qualitative and quantitative improvement of its information system for tourism, in order to better serve the needs of the municipality, region, tourists, visitors, investors, entrepreneurs, students and citizens and business in general.Porto is thus seen as the natural entry point for those interested in wine and the vineyards of the Douro Valley.
The market is increasingly demanding with regard to the use of digital channels, a simple, safe and convenient interface that managed multiple channels of interaction allowed a participatory role, and not being mere recipients / consumers of information or -Section 9 presents the conclusion.

THE DESTINATION PORTO AND NORTHERN PORTUGAL
Tourism has established itself as a sector bet in Northern Portugal since, in recent years, the region made a large effort on the cooperation of regional institutions with local tourism and business associations, aligning the corresponding policies and instruments to strengthen the national and regional branding of Porto and Northern Portugal.
All that means to strengthen, both domestically and internationally, the brand much-needed increases in income and employment of the population in a deprived talization of heritage (material and immaterial), the improvement of the urban and rural environment, the setting of skilled labour so that, together with other initiatives locally, regionally and nationally, Porto can contribute to "generate a level of pro- Urban destinations such as Porto are spaces of concentration of creative, productive which in the current stage of growth and post-industrial era of economic globalization causes them to provide themselves with infrastructure, equipment and strategic services to maintain their hierarchical position, makes them compete not only in terms of the power to attract tourists, but also in relation to the capture of other business and investment opportunities.
ence its day-to-day life.For domestic and repeating visitors the attraction of the cities lies Porto must therefore present itself as a multi-sellable destination, with segmentation and suitability of the different tourism products to the different markets.Due to the new ences, these products must be integrated and unique, with a clear intention of satisfying, and adding value to the relationship with the territory, from the moment of choosing the destina-It should be noted, however, that planning and management of a destination must be business to the city and the region (tourism consumption), but also guided by the needs side of the equation (tourism production).This balance between demand, supply and city life is essential for tourism development to take place and must be seen as the foundation for promoting a destination.
Considering that tourism is of strategic importance to the economy of the city and for the regeneration of its historic centre, there is still a great deal of progress to be made in this area, in terms of Porto and the Northern region, anchored in the wealth of its material assets, the international recognition of the brands "Porto" and "Douro", and the inter-

THE TOURISM WEBSITE AS A MARKETPLACE
The portal is based on the concept of a tourism marketplace (see Figure 1), an integrated tourism information and promotion system that combines a series of tools and technologies for the implementation of an integrated set of solutions.Figure 1 The system supports the monitoring, along the value chain, of the perceived quality, providing and obtaining aggregate data (and individualized data if so consented) of all requests and end user interactions with the suppliers, both while providing information and advice or while purchasing goods and services.Starting from the early stage of trip planning and remote access (e.g.telephone, SMS, email and web), proceeding to the arrival into the city and face to face interactions (e.g.tourist shops, gas stations and tourist inforgoods and services (e.g.reusable Porto Card, interactive kiosks), eventually leaving the The strategic goal of Porto's Tourism website is contributing to the competitiveness of the city and the region as a whole.The assumption is that Porto has its own values, The website anchor products, at the strategic level, are City-break and Cultural Tourism; and the products being developed: Nature tourism, Business tourism, Health The website promotes the coordination and consultation between key tourism stakeholders for the realization of a shared strategy.The Portal is based on the dissemination and promotion of tourism by bringing visibility to regional resources, which are the key elements on which the tourism products are based.The Portal provides broad visibility and enables the partners from the tourism production side to have an active part in managing their space on the Portal.The model developed for the portal covers monitoring information about the dynamics of tourism in Porto, in the framework of regional, national and international tourism.
The Website Tourism Portal is an instrument to contribute to strengthening the image of the destinations Porto and Northern Portugal as it offers the potential and real tourdiverse destinations, enhancing the image of the brands and contributing to the development of local and regional economy.
ferentiating aspects of the tourist destination to the national and international market.The 1) Strengthen the trademarks and tourism products in the national and international markets; Create a continuity in terms of image and communication of the different products; Combat seasonality, contributing to the growth in the number of Portuguese and foreign tourists in Porto and Northern Portugal, both in terms of generated revenue and increased length of stay; oriented to the demand, and to promote the destination.In particular: Cataloguing, integrating and systematizing the provision of information, products and services related to the tourism industry of the city and the region in a multichannel communication platform; Implementing interactive and transactional services, in a phased manner, with special focus on the GIS component with the integration of multimedia tech-services, online reservations and other e-commerce services; Leveraging synergies with other partners, initiatives and programs of the municipality and the region, to create business opportunities, particularly for SMEs providing services in the industries of tourism and information technology.

RATIONALE FOR THE DESIGN OF THE WEBSITE
The challenges: How can the Tourism Portal of the Municipality of Porto become a relevant source of information and promotion of the destination from the customer / traveller point of view?How can the portal become a tool for decision support of all segments that it targets?How can the portal convert potentially interested visitors into consumers?How can the portal become a reference for the various agents involved in the transaction between supply and demand for tourism?How can this online presence help and Northern Portugal?What concrete initiatives of the Municipality of Porto are most design of measures to facilitate the process of decision making (recommendation) and motivations.From the point of view of structuring the offer the website must be seen as a shop window, showcasing the different products in an orderly fashion.
The guiding principles were: 1) Agents and partners should have an indication of the quality of service provided to other consumers using ratings and comments by conwebsite support these guiding principles from the consumer point of view and from the producer point of view.
The development of the website is based on eight assumptions: 1) SEO (search en-registration; Worth highlighting was the effort put in the creation of a database of tourism resources, which is the base for the portal and aims to be the value proposition on promoting the destination in the digital channels and thus contributing to the economic value of the tourism resources.
The concrete actions selected for implementation were: 1) Dossier/Kit "Meet Porto" -Module to promote the city for integration in partner sites.Offering a package of essential city information that can be integrated in the online presence of other agents and partners, it strengths the positioning of the portal as a legitimate source of knowledge about the city and spreads the brand.
Cultural Offer -A comprehensive agenda of the city's cultural offerings structured

WEBSITE STRUCTURE
three main channels of the Tourism Portal are VISITING, LIVING, and BUSINESS and ing the destination Porto.Highlight for the VISITING channel, which pays particular behaviour of visitors to the destinations Porto and Northern Portugal.We considered in the VISITING channel as priority markets the Portuguese, Spanish, English and German, and as priority segments the interactive travellers, college students and travellers over formation technology, and the segments college students, researchers, entrepreneurs and freelancers.Finally, the BUSINESS and R&D channel includes as well the European market, focusing on the segments of business people, meetings and incentive organizers (event planners), and investors.
These channels are complemented with the transversal channel WHAT'S ON which events, enhancing the economic value and promotion of both (e.g. when searching for information about (the House of Music to be surprised by the presentation and characterization of related tourism resources, as well as its events catalogue).
The segment of cultural tourism that wants a more complete immersion in the destination, both at the time of planning the trip and at the time of stay, has at its disposal the channel CITY OF PORTO which aims at valuing the historical and artistic heritage of Porto.This is an area of more detailed information that will be presented chronologically through a multimedia timeline.
for each thematic channel (Visiting, Living, Business and R&D, and City of Porto), the large common elements amongst them are the tourism resources database of Porto and Northern Portugal and the events database ( tourism resources trying to enhance the economic value of the tourism resources, organizing them, promoting them and giving them an international scale.contributing to the development and promotion of each resource.PLAN YOUR TRIP was designed as a tool for personalized trip planning, i.e., to allow the end user, depending on his/her choices, to automatically create, in a personalized way, a travel roadbook.In order to get feedback on the perceptions of consumers each resource offers links to Facebook, Foursquare and Tripadvisor.Porto Card is a card that can be purchased and includes discounts and advantages in access to various resources. Associated with the Tourism Portal and tourism resources database is the implemen-and services (preferably interactive applications or applications for mobile platforms).
comprises the tourism resources database.The Tourism Portal is thus based on a set of tools for planning, searching, recommendation and cross-contents fertilization, together they implement a warehouse for the resources to be promoted.Each Channel -Visiting, Living, and Business R&D -features All resources originating from the tourism resources database are geo-referenced to allow the association of all other kinds of references to resources, be they events, plan-the diversity of information concerning a particular resource, systematically classifying and segmenting it, thus contributing to enhancing the number of associations that can be automatically made.

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The second phase of the implementation of the website was creating a development plan for the information architecture of each channel.
The VISITING channel implied the creation of areas of information according to supply and promotion of the destination Porto: Discover, Your Trip, Community, Mobile Apps, Porto Card.Each area of information was organized into sub-themes, and each organization allowed the systematization of the provisioning of Points of Interest and information on products and related services.In addition to the main areas of information some complementary transversal areas were implemented, which aim to enhance the searching for feature X in the Tourism Portal might have several other information associevents associated with the resource, routes into which it is inserted, etc.This complement Figure 8 shows the breakdown of the topics in the areas of information deemed essential for the Visiting channel.In the Visiting Channel, the area Discover presents a segmentation that aims to facilitate the search for information by the user, that may make his/her choices according to & Entertainment, Accommodation, Eating and Drinking, and other segments (Recommended for ...).Each theme unfolds in information areas that culminate in the detail of the resource.Figure 9 illustrates the information detail designed for the area Discover of the Visiting channel.The What's On channel allows the user to search for events according to themes, the date of the events, the events information detail or following suggestions made by the Portal.Associated to the What's On channel are other areas of information such as Opportunities and Routes and Tours.
The Living Channel aggregates a series of information and resources for those wishing to live in the city up to one year, whether for work, study or to conduct research Eating & Drinking and Entertainment, and other content, especially in the area of housing, study and research, work, that present useful information content for those planning who come to live in the city, this channel is at the same time, a database of useful information for the region's economic agents.The website tries to make connections between different items of information, thus allowing the user to get the most relevant information according to his/her motivations.In this sense the Living channel is also linked to What's On and Routes and Tours.The Living channel also has an area of Entertainment and Community.The Entertainment area promotes resources associated with the entertainment industry.The Community area is a The Business channel is focused in the business community in general.It was designed to be complemented with the leisure segment, thus it has associated to it information on Events and Leisure Tours.Two areas of emphasis to leverage resources and enhance this channel are Investing and Research & Development.
of foreign investment in the Metropolitan Area of Porto and in Northern Portugal, the second is intended to map and promote the main centres of R&D and the Centres for Knowledge and Technology Transfer in Porto and the Northern Region, with emphasis the Business channel includes an area dedicated to the tourism trade, which presents the information most relevant to this area, including the region brochures and a photo gallery, and establishing the link to the business agenda and the personal guide.and culture, geography, traditions, heritage and events of Porto and North of Portugal that, due to its importance, help to consolidate the reputation of these destinations and is The user of the Portal to save, manage and share his/her travel to Porto and/or Northern Portugal in order to obtain and provide input, suggestions and recommendations to/from friends; The Tourism portal: to collect user data and various information about the use of the website.The collected data (socio-demographic, physical limitations, stereotypes, length of stay, points of interest, and motivations) will be used in aggregate form to serve as the basis for data tools such as Toursplan.The TOURSPLAN service has a local database to store the values that associate the user mentation of this service requires the development of various methods of collection and return of information that are needed to interface service items (e.g. points of interest, events and tours) to obtain the necessary information and synchronize it with the local database.This service will allow providing to registered users of the Tourism Portal recommendations and personalized service and travel planning and resource information.On the other hand the data collected and analysed by the system will provide the basis for recommending future users and contribute to the business intelligence component of the Tourism Information System of the City of Porto.

DISCUSSION
PROJECT MANAGEMENT reported to a Steering Committee consisting of the department heads of IT, Marketing, and Tourism of the Municipality of Porto, the head of Porto Digital, and the City Councithe Permanent Team (PT) consisting of three Team Leaders with functions in areas of digital contents, interactive and transactional services, marketing and sales, and IT.Each rent activities according to the skills needed in each stage of the implementation of the Portal.With the completion of each phase it started the process of knowledge transfer to the Municipality of Porto, the management of the portal from a product point of view, and of Porto.
Figure 16 MAIN ISSUES On the one hand by having a large scope that required working simultaneously on implementation.Also the contractor turned out not to be accustomed to working with this version of Microsoft Sharepoint, therefore the implementation took much longer sources from the different entities involved in creating the portal could not be met and the initially planned budget proved to be scarce, some improvisation had to take place, agreements between the Porto Digital Association and their home academic institutions -ing portal and the still distant goal for the complete product.This documentation set will namely guide the day-to-day work that is being handed over to the internal staff of the Tourism Department of the Municipality of Porto.Here the challenge is whether the maintenance of the tourism portal can be merged into the daily routine of the Tour-ism Department, for the time being some progress has been made but it is too early to consider this a success.
The new official tourism website of the city of Porto: promoting tourism and a wine destination ROTUR REVISTA DE OCIO Y TURISMO -Nº 5 panies developing products for tourism, tourists, etc.).This is creating an atmosphere of acknowledged the need for cooperation in practice they were working back to back.The com), that was developed by the LatitudeN German company using the digital contents 8. RELATED WORK -don (visitlondon.com),Madrid (esmadrid.com),New York (nycgo.com)and Singapore Tourism portal of Porto.
After the portal went into full production use, to assess the performance of the Poranalysis with the tourist portals of London (visitlondon.com),Madrid (esmadrid.com),New York (nycgo.com)and Singapore (yoursingapoure.com), in terms of the number of page (bouncing, the lower the better), and the average time in minutes spent on the site From reading the charts it seems that Porto's Tourism Portal had good user adherence when compared with the reference sites in the variables under consideration.Although it even seems to obtain better results than the other sites it is necessary to discount the novelty factor caused by the recent appearance of the portal, only a year from now will it be possible to assess whether this trend continues. - The (CEDTUR -Centro de Estudos de DesenvolvimentoTurístico), and that has Porto Digital on the wine domains ( ) together with information on the surrounding heritage, nature and tourism interest points.Besides the website proper ( ) a database is also being created with all the information gathered, that database besides powering the website will also be supplied to interested parties so that the information can Portal Douro.The Douro Valley vation Centre of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro and that has the participation of the Universities of Porto and Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro and the R&D Institute INESC to UNESCO, in order to attract and retain their "clients" in view of its history, its culture, its landscape admired by foot, boat, train or car, its heritage, its gastronomy and accommodation, their vineyards and wine, and their regional products .As such it is a natural complement of the Tourism Portal of Porto.
The iPorto tal Association in cooperation with the Metropolitan Council of Porto, powers the collection of content for the printed cultural events magazine of the Metropolitan Area of Porto, and the corresponding website (iporto.amp.pt).A derived product is the nEvents events database that is used by Porto's Tourism Portal to gather information on cultural and leisure events relevant for tourism.

CONCLUSION
implementation.The bar was placed quite high, the budget and the available time were mentation, in an early phase to seek the involvement of other stakeholders and providing have been key to the results thus far achieved.and the involvement of the market, that has seen great potential in this tool to promote their services / businesses and in boosting the global value of the destination.The recent approval by the Committee for the Coordination and Regional Development of the North of the work performed.

Facilities
and Local Services dedicated search engine.Crossing the recommendation of the portal with local facilities and services -Positioning the portal as a provider of quality and relevant information.Pocket guides -essential information about the city.Compilation of essential information of the city tourism supply, in the form of guides, which contain what the stay.