We collaborated with our friends at Smokeylemon to help Regional Development Agency, Venture Taranaki (VT), create a new and improved website.
The Destination side of their business, Taranaki Like No Other, is charged with attracting visitors to the region, and they needed to streamline the backend of their website, reduce administration time, and keep it up to date, whilst also making it user friendly for site visitors and easier for them to find the correct information.
Tourism, hospitality, and event listings are generated both manually, by the VT team through the backend of their CMS and by local businesses through a login, as well as database feeds via Tourism New Zealand and Eventfinda APIs.
To maintain control of what is displayed and the integrity of the listings, the Venture Taranaki team have full capability to approve a listing prior to it appearing on their site, regardless of it's source.
Then we customised further functionality to provide the perfect tailored solution for the client. Some of their customised features include:
Favourites
Site visitors now have the ability to ‘favourite’ and save listings for later. This makes planning a breeze for the end user, and encourages return sit visits.
Discovery Map
Feeding all the listings through to a map of Taranaki, gives users the ability to browse listings depending on where they are located in the region.
Itinerary Builder
By far, one of our favourite features! VT’s itinerary builder is an easy-to-use tool and is an effective way for visitors to find what they are going to do, see, and eat, as well as where to stay during their trip. They simply select their dates and start planning by filling the corresponding time slots - morning, afternoon, and evening plus two additional slots for additional must dos - either from the listings directory or their favourites.
User Logins for business events
Many local businesses host their own events which they request to be featured on the Venture Taranaki website. Thanks to this new feature, local businesses can now log in and load their own events. Once submitted, Venture Taranaki check and approve the listing, before making it live on the website.
