Magpie, a content management system for the tours and activities sector, has been set up by a number of well-known figures from the sector.
The system for tours and activities descriptions has been launched by founder Christian Watts (City Sightseeing San Francisco) with financial backing to the tune of about $500,000 from Viator founder Rod Cuthbert and Tokyo-based Venture Republic.
San Francisco, U.S.-based Magpie Travel was set up by former-tour operator Watts last year to address the lack of a single access point for tours and activities content.
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The issue has been a major challenge for suppliers who often have to upload variations of their content to tens of distributors.
A further source of frustration, which Magpie can solve, it claims, has been how up-to-date listings are kept by distributors.
Watts says: "It’s not uncommon for an operator to have 20 or more – sometimes many more – channel partners; all of them need up-to-date information, so managing product descriptions and images for everyone becomes a major task.
"While having a diverse and broad distribution channel is a good thing, it also means allocating an enormous amount of staff time to ensuring each partner has the content they need, and that they keep it up to date.”
Not contented
Up to now content between suppliers and resellers has been shared by PDF or word documents or sharing services such as DropBox or Google Drive.
Watts adds that Magpie will enable tour companies to upload product details once, maintain them, and then deliver to distributors in the required format.
The service has been beta tested by a number of tours providers.
Stephen Oddo, CEO of Walks, says: "We have tested the Magpie beta for some time and think this technology is badly needed in the tours & activities sector. It simplifies what is currently an overly cumbersome process with way too many touch-points.
"We see great opportunity to create workflow efficiencies both on supplier and reseller side using this platform."
The service is available for free or a premium service with additional functionality and reporting capability is also available for $99 per month.
Cuthbert says that his experience from the online travel space shows that the issue is just as much of a challenge for distributors.
He says: “The channel will certainly benefit from a content repository that can map to each reseller’s format. And frankly, even the biggest resellers have limited resources; most have significant backlogs before they can get new products up and bookable online.
"A system that saves time and resources on the initial product load is going to be instantly popular."