A little less than a year after the Travel Industry Association and the CEO-based Travel Business Roundtable merged, the rebranded US Travel Association has unveiled its new website.
These are the old logos:
Here is the new US Travel Association logo:
The new homepage looks like this:
The website runs on an open-source LAMP platform and uses Drupal for content management.
Eric Weber [pdf here], U.S. Travel's vice president of technology, says the redesign project, which took one year from concept to rollout, was shaped in the following manner, and the formula may be useful for other companies undertaking similar tasks.
- Figure out your objectives and undertstand the personality you want the website to project.
- Hire user experience and design experts who can develop designs and concepts that can be worked into the information architecture.
- Develop a technology and infrastructure roadmap.
- Leverage your assets, including, in this case, open-source technologies available in the marketplace.
- Engage in project management according to your plan timetable and budget.
Weber says technology issues weren't the biggest challenge. Instead, he says, the heavy lifting comes in defining your objectives and turning those goals into reality.
US Travel officials believe the redesigned website is cleaner and easier to navigate.
Quoting from an e-mail US Travel sent to the press Jan. 7, the association cites the following as key enhancements:
- An online newsroom with RSS, industry news, as well as useful travel facts and statistics;
- Searchable archive of press releases and studies;
- Multimedia content on U.S. Travel events and announcements;
- Information on U.S. Travel Association’s mission and membership; and
- Easy-to-navigate Research, Events and Government Relations sections for the latest industry projections, activities and policy positions.
The homepage also features the now-almost mandatory social-networking sharing tools for posting things to Twitter, Facebook, Digg etc.