Odisha tourism department taps AI, analytics to rejig its portal

Enthused by the spike in domestic and foreign tourists’ arrivals, the Odisha tourism department has gone for a revamp of its website. 

In the new portal, the state has deployed Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) that conflates artificial intelligence and analytics to provide better services to the tourists.

The department has gone for aggregation of five websites into one website to create a consolidated portal to create a one-stop solution and a single identity of Odisha for a prospective tourist.

“We have merged the websites as you cannot have multiple positioning for promoting tourism. Apart from tourism packages, the portal will offer transaction services to the tourists. Driven by intelligent analytics, the revamped website will offer a one-stop solution to the tourists”, said a senior government official.

Among states, Odisha is pioneering use of AEM platform in the country which is already currently in vogue in Australia and Visit Florida portals.

It is also used by ‘Incredible India’. AEM is Adobe’s platform and it enables customized and personalized user experience based on the user’s search preferences and ensures enormous cloud repository to maintain and manage digital assets. With AEM tool, the new website will be mobile friendly and has a very strong analytics tool. The website Analytics will actually help determine a correlation between the success of the Digital Drive and the actual tourist influx in the state.

The department plans to feature on the website, an end to end trip planning capability including online booking with eco-tour nature camps, Panthanivas and hotel aggregator Oyo rooms. The end to end trip planner will  include publishing of various trails and tour packages by DoT (department of tourism) recognized travel agents.

The trip planner will also allow tourists to book and plan entire trails and packages including the smallest details like tour guides and transportation etc. By on-boarding local tourism influencers such as travel agents, tour guides, hoteliers  the  department  is sure that inclusivity in the digital initiative will bring about a drastic change in the tourism in Odisha.

Each travel agent will get a profile and a dashboard through which they can update their contact details, view and answer online inquiries and publish their trails. A similar functionality will also be extended to hotels , lodges, guest houses etc. going forward allowing them to feature their top deals. 

The website bolstered by the social media promotions intends to put Odisha on the map and bucket list of every international and Indian tourist by offering off beat destinations and trails and a seamless planning capability.

Odisha tourism’s investment and commitment to this Digital Initiative and revamp will soon turn 'Odisha –Incredible  India’s best kept Secret'  into  'Odisha- the Hottest go-to destination for any culture, heritage, spiritual or eco enthusiast in the world'.