by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
The Jacksonville and the Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau will soon expand its capabilities in cyberspace. A new interactive website is in the works that will go beyond the typical online brochure lauding the merits of Northeast Florida.
“We’ve scaled back the content a bit and added more transactional features to the site,” said CVB president Kitty Ratcliffe.
Transactional equates to convenience. In a growing “point and click” world, the Internet is gaining popularity as a preferred medium for shopping. Just as Christmas shoppers can skip the hassle of long lines and packed mall parking lots in favor of a relaxed shopping spree online, so can tourists eying a trip to the River City. The CVB website will allow travelers to book hotel rooms, restaurant reservations and even golf tee times all from the comfort of their computer chair.
“So someone who is coming in from outside and planning their trip not only will be able to make their hotel room reservation online on our site, but will also be able to make a reservation for dinner one night and book their tee time,” said Ratcliffe. “In essence, they can plan their entire trip and confirm their activities before they even get here. So we’re pretty excited about that.”
The new website will also be programmed to cater to individual visitors’ tastes.
“We made the site more intelligent,” she continued. “It will ask the consumer for their preferences and then it will recognize the consumer the next time with information tailored to their preferences.”
The new site, www.visitjacksonville.com, will replace www.jaxcvb.com in about a month and be available to the general public, said Ratcliffe, although it is currently “live” within a restricted network of the CVB’s membership. It would have been ready sooner, but the events of Sept. 11 shifted priorities for a while as the CVB scrambled to cope with the suddenly altered tourism climate.
The CVB currently facilitates about 325 member businesses that are primarily hotels, restaurants, visitor attractions and other entities that provide services to visitors.