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May 1, 2007 |
Tourists are flocking to B.C.'s hills in anticipation of the 2010 Winter Olympics, and businesses are relying on tech to keep pace
By Lisa Manfield
In the heart of downtown Vancouver, at the edge of the art gallery lawn and in the shadow of the venerable Hotel Vancouver, a digital clock mounted inside a 20-foot cement sculpture counts down the minutes to the 2010 Olympics. Each flash of the blue pixilated screen is a reminder that, in a few short years, thousands of people will descend on the province.
But just two hours along the Sea to Sky Highway, at the heart of Whistler ski country where the Olympic downhill ski events will take place, the influx has already begun. Record snowfall levels combined with growing international awareness of the region have brought a steady increase in visitors to Whistler in the past year, giving the resort municipality a practice run for the onslaught that will occur in 2010. And for Whistler.com, the central bookings and marketing office for all things Whistler Mountain, this has meant an opportunity to ensure its systems will be able to handle the load.
Bracing for the influx
Launched in 2001 by private owners, Whistler.com is now co-owned by both the Resort Municipality of Whistler and Tourism Whistler, which runs it in conjunction with its bookings call centre. “Our primary purpose is to provide the Web site for Whistler visitors to research and book accommodations and activities,” said Diana Lyons, general manager. “In fact, we represent 95 per cent of all accommodations and activities in Whistler — more than 80 buildings, 50 property management companies and 5,500 rental units.”
It’s a ’net property as valuable as the bricks and mortar accommodations it represents: 65 per cent of visitors get to the site simply by typing the URL into the browser. “It’s a very intuitive URL,” Lyons said. “We get a little over 100,000 visitors per month, depending on the month. That’s 2.1 million unique visits per year.”
And the numbers are growing. Last year, Whistler.com experienced a year-over-year increase in Web visits of 106 per cent. Online sales increased by 408 per cent, and room nights sold into the resort increased by 140 per cent. It started getting inquiries about Olympic bookings as soon as Vancouver won the games back in 2003, but it has been keeping a waiting list until its properties are ready to start taking reservations for 2010.
“Prior to Tourism Whistler coming on board, there wasn’t a lot of marketing dollars for the site,” said Lyons, adding that now all marketing programs undertaken by the organization include a call to action to the Web site. “We’ve been working hard to improve the quality of the site’s content and we’re moving to a more consistent look and feel with the Tourism Whistler brand, and these changes are improving our rankings. We’re not only here to sell but also to give visitors an experience of Whistler.”
That experience is captured through a combination of written descriptions, visuals and virtual tours, along with search functions that allow visitors to check the availability of selected properties ranging
from rustic chalets to luxury hotels. For visitors who aren’t yet comfortable with the idea of booking
online, the call centre phone number is also provided prominently on the site. In fact, it’s still used in the majority of bookings.
Online bookings represent only 25 per cent of all sales, but this number is expected to increase. “We’ve done a lot to improve the online bookings form, and we are seeing significant growth in that area,” Lyons said.
And with the Olympics focusing international attention on Whistler, the site expects to see further growth. Data released in December by TravelClick, a U.S.-based business process management solutions provider, show the Internet contributed 40 per cent, or 8,581,936 reservations, at major hotel brands, a 24.8 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2005.
Building up the back end
And that’s why, back in Vancouver, Fusepoint Managed Services has been working to fortify the back ends of businesses such as Whistler.com in preparation for the anticipated upswing. The infrastructure management services and applications development company has just doubled the size of its Vancouver data centre to accommodate the growing needs of the region’s burgeoning economy. “Once Vancouver won the Winter Olympics, lots of things started speeding up,” said Fusepoint’s CEO George Kerns. “Online transactions have really taken off and this is a growing area,” he said, adding that more and more people are seeing the value in outsourcing mission-critical applications that allow them to harness the power of the Web to drive profit to their businesses.
Counting the Four Seasons Hotel, Air Transat, Mountain Equipment Co-op and Whistler.com among its clients, the company, with offices in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, provides 24/7 protection of business data — everything from secure data storage to security software, patches for system vulnerabilities, load balancing devices, back-up services, disaster recovery and secure hosting of managed servers. “We wear the pager,” Kerns joked.
But security is no joke for Fusepoint or its clients, which trust the continuity of their operations to its ability to buttress their back ends for every possible worst-case scenario. The data centre visibly reflects those efforts. It is a technological fortress, with redundancies built in at every opportunity to protect clients’ servers, data and applications. “We have at least one backup for everything here,” said Derek Wallden, solutions architect.
Located in the Harbour Centre tower, which is itself “a local point of presence for Internet in the region,” Wallden said the centre’s interior-facing walls are reinforced with mesh and equipped with vibration and motion sensors. The doors sport tamper-proof hinges and a magnetic lock that offers 20 tonnes of resistance. Access to the entrance is obtained via biometric scan and, inside the entrance area, a staff person manually vets visitors from behind bulletproof glass.
Inside, cages filled with servers churn out business for Fusepoint’s hundred or so clients. The room is equipped with four 20-tonne air conditioners that push air under perforated tiles to keep the temperature at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Three Internet connections — all from different carriers to ensure continuous service — offer load-balanced gigabit connections. Seismic bracing under the floor is designed to limit disruption in the event of an earthquake. And the data centre also offers “true redundant failover power and a diesel generator,” a boon to the many Vancouver businesses that lost power in this winter’s wind storms, Wallden said, adding that Fusepoint received many leads in the aftermath of those storms.
Having filled 5,000 square feet to the brim with servers and support systems, Fusepoint started building a second site about eleven months ago. In early March, an additional 5,000 square feet of space was ready to welcome new machines and clients, and Kerns figures it’ll give the Vancouver centre another 30 months of growth space.
Pumping up the volume
This is good news for Whistler.com, which has been a Fusepoint customer for the past four years and recently had the company add a second server to handle the site’s sharp increase in online visitors.
Lyons said Whistler.com is relying on Fusepoint to provide a stable backbone for its operations as it expands to meet anticipated needs. “We’re not worried about coping with growth because we can add as many servers as we want to handle the volume,” she said. “The Web site is the primary component of our business and we do have to have a very robust back end.”
Which is exactly what Fusepoint provides, said Kerns, listing a network perimeter and firewall among the infrastructure applications, along with security features. And Fusepoint has also put together a security team that participates in global intelligence forums on hacking trends, to ensure it stays ahead of the curve in protecting its clients.
“From a security perspective, they let us focus on the site, and on the business,” Lyons said.
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