The Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) has implemented OpenTravel CRM - CVB Edition™ for its next generation visitor relationship, marketing and automated fulfillment platform.

OpenTravel CRM™ is a web-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform designed specifically for the travel industry. The CVB Edition is designed to handle the requirements of convention and tourism bureaus. In addition to full visitor profile and contact management features, it has automated brochure fulfillment, workflow automation, and integrated intelligent marketing capabilities. Developed by Travel Sciences, Inc., Georgia’s new visitor destination marketing and fulfillment CRM provides a full-circle automation solution designed to enhance brochure fulfillment response and efficiency with integrated tracking and reporting.

Georgia’s new visitor CRM and fulfillment system was unveiled at Georgia’s 2008 Governor’s Tourism Conference which was held on September 10 through 12. The project management, installation and delivery of the system was handled by Enguage, an Atlanta-based, digital-marketing solutions firm which provides destination tourism-based marketing, consulting and advisory services to the GDEcD.

Joseph Mazzarella, president and CEO of Travel Sciences, Inc. said, “OpenTravel CRM™ is a powerful CRM platform for travel-centric enterprises and is being recognized as both an affordable and more capable alternative to more costly and less-effective generic CRM solutions. Our solution is based on the newest web technologies and offers best of class scalability and reliability, and it is designed to easily interface with other systems through XML based web services. Best of all, it is designed for travel, and this makes it a much more feature-rich and relevant solution. In the case of the Georgia Tourism Department, the ability to provide on-demand brochure and information fulfillment capability within a fully integrated visitor profile management system with follow-on and follow-up customer service and marketing outreach, is a distinct competitive advantage.”

OpenTravel CRM is designed to seamlessly handle the complex relationships associated with travel that extend beyond direct travelers to include groups, agencies, consortia, suppliers and other important channel entities that form a sophisticated web of interaction. According to Mazzarella, “We are unaware of any CRM solution that handles the level complexity that is truly needed for the travel space, and where generic CRM solutions have been deployed, it has been very costly and less than satisfactory. OpenTravel CRM is a great choice for convention and visitor bureaus working on limited budgets but that require a sophisticated solution that will meet the demands of destination and visitor related communication, service delivery and marketing.”