Technical Report on t-FORUM Web Portal Design & Development

The Tourism Intelligence Forum, or t-FORUM, is a global non-profit association with the core mission of bridging tourism theory and practice by transferring knowledge to and within tourism sectors. It acts as the leading hub for advancing the position of tourism as an instrument for knowledge, culture, economic progress and sustainable development. Its unique strategy is to link and directly involve destinations, tourism businesses, academia, knowledge institutions, governments and international organizations. The t-FORUM website, extensively described in the present report, has been specifically designed to be the association's strategic channel for self-promotion, by providing contents, services and information to both internal (t-FORUM members) and external users, giving visibility to the activities and initiatives implemented by the association, thus enhancing networking and collaboration in order to accomplish the t-FORUM's main objectives: - to identify sources of tourism knowledge (from here-after t-knowledge) in destinations, businesses, academia, governments and international organizations; - to foster and support educational activities for the dissemination of t-knowledge; - to create information platforms for dissemination of innovative t-knowledge; - to facilitate the use of t-knowledge to destinations, businesses, academia, governments and international organizations; - to nurture any programs or actions for innovation in tourism. In this view, the aims of this document are: - to describe the complex structure of the t-FORUM portal, its architecture and functionalities as well as the technologies used; - to propose an effective and efficient governance model for its successful management, by identifying roles and responsibilities for the t-FORUM members. The starting point of the t-FORUM website design process was the awareness that we were not simply designing a user interface looking attractive, accessible and usable but that we were developing an interface that would have played a key role in the accomplishment of the association's goals. Therefore, the first step was to gain a clear understanding of the vision and mission of the t-FORUM, which was made possible by taking part in a number of meetings in which the Founding Members discussed their ideas on these fundamental issues. Basically, our intention was that the Portal could: - communicate immediately and effectively the objectives of the t-FORUM as well as the main challenges and problems in the field of tourism that this organization wants to deal with; - persuade the website users to join the association, thus creating that collaborative network which is an essential requirement for the production and dissemination of knowledge in any sector.