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Goulburn iVisit Integration

Customer Background

Goulburn is a provincial city in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia in the Goulburn Mulwaree Council Local Government Area. It is located 190 kilometres south-west of Sydney on the Hume Highway. As of 2006 Goulburn had a population of 20,127 people. 1

Goulburn is a railhead on the Main Southern line and service centre for the surrounding pastoral industry and a stopover for those travelling on the Hume Highway. It has a central park and many historic buildings, including old houses near the railway station on Sloane Street and two 19th-century cathedrals. It is home to the Big Merino, the world's largest cement sheep.1

Our customer is the Goulburn Visitor Information Centre which is a modern facility located in the heart of the city and provides visitors with all the information they need to know about the local area.

In addition to the information provided within the centre there is an established website (http://www.igoulburn.com) which is updated daily by tourism staff with all of the local events as well as promoting local businesses through their listing on the site. The website is a big part of day to day operations as well as a means of generating additional revenue for the centre.

MDE approached Goulburn Mulwaree Council after visiting the iGoulburn website and seeing the amount of useful information available. We discussed the opportunity to develop a touchscreen system which could be placed within the centre and provide visitors with an easy way to gain access to the up to date information already available on the website.

Business Challenge

The discussions that took place between MDE and the Tourist Information Centre were very positive and a list of requirements were generated which included the following:

1. The touch screen had to be maintenance free, which meant that it would need to be automatically synchronised with the iGoulburn website on at least a daily basis.

2. It had to include access to Google Maps and not rely upon Google's own co-ordinates for address listings but rather on those which the visitor centre staff manually enter into a web based spreadsheet.

3. It had to be easy to use and as time efficient as possible.

4. It had to include a reporting system with detailed usage statistics.

Solution

The solution was to use the iVisit system which MDE had already developed and to modify/customise it to meet all of these requirements.

Over the course of the next few months MDE developed a complete system which included many revisions and many hours of testing to ensure that the system that was delivered to Goulburn would not only meet but exceed all of their expectations. This included the addition of some new features such as the ability to transfer contact information to a users mobile phone via Bluetooth.

Once happy with the solution, MDE and the Goulburn Visitor Centre agreed to a 3 month trial of the system and a Kiosk was placed in the Visitor centre.

Initially there was no fixed internet connection available but we were able to improvise by using a wireless internet adapter. This proved to be very temperamental but as a temporary solution it gave us an opportunity to trial the system under everyday conditions and the end result was very pleasing. Customer response was excellent and it was clear that this system would be an asset to the information centre.

Upon completion of the trial period, Goulburn Mulwaree Council approved funding for the project and a new and improved version of the iVisit kiosk was installed. At the same time, a new permanent internet connection was installed next to the iVisit system and provided a much more reliable internet solution.

Following the success of the first system, a second order was made for a version of iVisit which could be accessed from outside of the centre on a 24/7 basis. After some research, MDE decided that the best solution would be to install a "through the glass" style system into one the visitor centres street facing windows. With the iVisit system installed, the Goulburn Visitor Information Centre is now able to provide important local information to visitors on a 24/7 basis.

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulburn,_New_South_Wales
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Technologies

  • MDE System Design
  • Java Application Development
  • MySQL Server
  • Kiosk Development
  • System Integration
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