Standard Online Tourism Architecture

The internet has become a mainstream medium thanks to its explosive use and the exponential growth of social media. Currently, there are over 87 billion searches conducted on Google every month and users have created more than 200 million blogs online and an impressive 60 million tweets are being sent every hour. The current world population is 6.7 billion, which means that the internet is reaching out to almost everybody in the world.

It is pertinent to note that the integration of technology into our daily lives is profoundly transforming consumers' behaviour and social practices. The travel industry has already seen this impact on their businesses. Where once, the travel agent was the mediator between the consumer and travel suppliers such as airlines and hotels, the consumer can now access these services directly from a laptop or mobile devices. There's a need for tourism and travel players to prepare themselves with the knowledge and tools to stay in the game.

Creative Advances Technology has introduced Tourism Online Collaboration Platform (TOCP) concept to embrace online technologies and bridge the digital divide in the industry. This concept has been materialised with the introduction of the Standard Online Tourism Architecture (SOTA) to the travel industry.

SOTA offers a collaboration platform that seamlessly connects travel agents, hoteliers, transport service providers, homestay operators, airlines, ticketing agents, event organisers and others.

Today, SOTA's success is evident in that over 16,000 travel and tourism related businesses have adopted it as an indispensable tool in their global online business strategy. Leveraging on the SOTA platform has enabled the travel industry to gain an almost instant access to a ready online market of global travellers.

The SOTA model also reduces the learning curve of doing business online and does away with the need for large investments into technology and infrastructure by providing a platform for sharing resources and technology.

Some of the notable organisations that are part of the SOTA network include the South East Asia.Org portal, Pacific Asia Tourism Association (PATA), Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand - Growth Triangle (IMT-GT), ASEAN Tourism Association (ASEANTA), North Sumatera Tourism Board (NSTB), Tourism Centre, Organisation of the Islamic Conference Tourism (OIC), Malaysian Association of Travel and Tour Agents (MATTA); Malaysian state tourism agencies such as Johor Tourism, Perak Tourism and Sarawak Tourism Board and also VirtualMalaysia.com, which is the Official e-Tourism Portal for the Ministry of Tourism, Malaysia. With SOTA's ever-expanding network of publisher sites and suppliers, travel agents will be able to maximise the exposure of their travel products.

SOTA is an electronic and collaboration platform that enables the tourism industry to harness the power of technology and the Internet to compete effectively on an international scale.

It is a "business-in-a-box" web-based travel management platform that helps travel operators to reach their targeted online market easily.

The innovative platform currently enables over 900 travel agents and 16,000 travel operators and tourism-related businesses to manage and market thousands of travel packages, room inventories and travel products.

SOTA platform enables travel players to gain an almost instant access to a vast network of global travellers. SOTA's distribution of your travel products and services throughout a network of hyperlink sites like Google, tens of thousands of travel related blogs, social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and travel portals such as VirtualMalaysia.com, Packages2Go.com, Wego.com, SouthEastAsia.org, IMTGTtourism.com, MalaysiaKini.com will definitely provide you with the widest reach of potential consumers.

SOTA allows you to have one view of travel business, all through the ease of the SOTA eXecutive Desktop.

Through it, you are able to find out and purchase:

• Promotions and updates from Hotels
• Specialised Ground Packages like diving, kayaking, etc
• Travel guides
• Transportation Tickets
• Event and Attraction Tickets

The SOTA eXecutive Desktop will also update you with the:

• Latest travel; news
• Business to Business Networking opportunities
• Enquiry & booking status of your products
• Web statistics of your pages

Be a part of our secure, easy-to-use and tightly integrated marketing and management solutions which simplify the management of your business and connect you to millions of online consumers.