Background
Headquartered in Port Solent Marina near Portsmouth, and dating back to 1974, Sunsail has grown from a yacht charter operation to be the largest and most successful sailing and watersports holiday operation in the world. With over 750 yachts and 35 bases covering the UK, Mediterranean, United States, Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Ocean, Sunsail offers the widest range of top quality holidays in the world's best sailing areas.
A New Business Strategy: Web Technology and E-Commerce
As a specialist tour operator, Sunsail needed to extend its global presence in the market beyond the offices located within the main sailing areas. The first phase was to establish a web presence to market Sunsail in three languages – English, French and German. The next phase was to redesign the web structure and content to include a full brochure with details of holiday centres, locations, accommodation, facilities and watersport activities. The third phase was to integrate this information with an on-line booking facility showing prices, availability, quotations and special offers in real time via the web site.
Operational Considerations
Although Sunsail had experienced web design capabilities and had implemented the first phase of the strategy they sought to bring in the integration expertise necessary to complete phases 2 and 3. After considering a number of partners for this project Sunsail eventually selected Modcomp and ViewMax to roll out the implementation plan.
From the technical viewpoint the on-line web booking facility needed to connect to the Sunsail call centre reservation application. This runs on a UNIX host system within Sunsail’s corporate LAN and required full firewall protection.
The Modcomp Solution
Modcomp proposed a solution based on ViewMax. The solution was based on a three-tier architecture using a standard browser as the client interface, connecting to a web server over the Internet. ViewMax provides the connectivity between the web server and the UNIX based reservation system.
The scope of this project included the following elements:
- Web server platform including Dell PowerEdge server, MS NT plus NT backup.
- Netscape Enterprise server.
- Firewall server platform.
- ViewMax 16 channel licence.
- Web site design and layout to accommodate Sunsail brochure images and text content.
- Site structure and navigation.
- Content management for dynamic areas including special offers, yacht sales, personnel vacancies.
- Training, consultancy and project management.
- Full maintenance support.
As well as on-line services integration with the holiday reservation system including:
- Availability
- Pricing and quotations
- Booking
- Credit card payment authentication
- Late availability
About Sunsail
Founded in 1974 with seven flotilla yachts in Greece, the Yacht Cruising Association started the concept of flotilla sailing. Early in the eighties, the watersports beach club concept (sailing and watersports holidays) was developed. The opening of the first UK Sailing Centre in the UK closely followed this. In late 1999, Sunsail (www.sunsail.com) joined the First Choice group of Companies (www.firstchoice.co.uk) - one of the three largest UK tour operators.
Conclusions
The key to selling high value, high quality holidays is in reaching out to a global audience without the expense of a physical presence in each territory targeted. The key to success is being competitive in all elements of the services offered. Introducing an on-line brochure and booking/payment system has enabled Sunsail to achieve both of these objectives.