Cape Town Tourism is Cape Town’s official regional tourism organisation, and is responsible for destination marketing, visitor and industry services. In line with their mandate to market Cape Town, the organisation has just launched its new website, designed and developed by Flow Communications.
“Colour was taken from the existing marketing material, using summery, fresh colours which give a sense of energy, liveliness and a sense of the cosmopolitan to the site,” says Quentin Duncan, one of the team of graphic designers who worked on the site.
The site not only looks fresh and clean, but has taken a fresh approach to user-interaction, promoting Web 2.0 concepts.
Visitors are invited to make use of the “My Itinerary” functionality that allows them to create plans and lists of attractions they would like to see.
“We’re particularly proud of the itinerary functionality, which is seamless thanks to our use of AJAX, which means you can update your itinerary without refreshing the page,” says Richard Frank who led the programming work the site. “We used a similar approach for the accommodation module.”
The emphasis across the site is on user-focused content that will lead a visitor to first dream and then achieve their perfect holiday in Cape Town. There are jam-packed magazine-style features on all sorts of things one can see and do in Cape Town, as well as a Visitors Like You area which recommends items based on a particular visitor type.
The website showcases top attractions throughout the greater Cape Town area and provides a Top 100list of places to visit, grouped into seven categories (Culture and Heritage, Nature and Environment, Outdoor and Adventure, Shopping, Wine and Dine, and Health and Wellness). These and other attractions can be added to or removed from the itinerary, using simple + and - symbols.
The site includes an accommodation database with its own search and filters, allowing users to narrow or broaden their results as required.
“Our chosen content management system, ExpressionEngine, is proving to be very flexible and is able to scale to the requirements of large websites with ease,” adds Frank.
Users are also able to network with Cape Town Tourism on StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter, Trip Advisor and Digg.