|
Cali net news
Young Firm plans to let companies change web pages at will
The Herald
20 September 2000 by Kristy Dorsey
SITTING in a village of just 500 souls at an address known simply as "The Square", a small group of youthful Internet entrepreneurs has begun work on a new application that could impact far beyond their young company's niche market in hotel services.
Although still in development, this yet-to-be-named product could eventually allow companies to simply and directly make changes to their web pages. In its most advanced form, this would work on any website, no matter who had designed it or where it was hosted.
The first version is being developed for Crieff Hydro Hotel by Cali Net, which hosts or provides other services to about 180 independent hotels throughout Scotland. James Shearer, technical director of Cali Net, says the business would have to work with about nine more hotels to get the product into a final "off-the-shelf" version that could be plugged into any website.
But this is a financial, rather than technical, barrier, as Cali Net funds all its development without any outside investment. If one customer came along wanting to buy (and pay for development of) the top-flight product, Shearer reckons it could be completed in about five weeks.
Established in 1998 by Shearer and sales director Paul Edwards, then aged 16 and 22 respectively, Cali Net began life as a one-stop-shop for travellers seeking booking and other information from independent Scottish hotels. It now employs six people at its office in Perthshire's Kinloch Rannoch, as well as about a dozen other consultants around the world who are brought in on a project-by-project basis.
About eight months ago, Cali Net began shifting its focus from web hosting - also known as ISP, or Internet service provision - to creating and providing application services (ASP). Put simply, the business is moving into sales of Internet-based products to individual hotels.
Current applications include PDF files to put brochures online, an Internet-based guestbook, technology to create 360deg. panorama tours for websites, and Internet-based discussion boards for visitors wanting to keep in contact with other guests and the proprietors of their holiday destination.
Such technologies have been a boost to Cali Net's clients, assuming the impact at Kinloch Rannoch's Dunalastair Hotel is typical.
Owned by Edwards and his parents, the 25-bedroom Dunalastair was Cali Net's first client. Since then, it has increased employment from five to 25 people and boosted annual turnover from £200,000 to £700,000.
Even this past summer, when so much of Scotland's tourist industry was suffering from a sharp downturn in overall visitors, the Dunalastair saw bookings increase by 20% on the previous year.
Edwards's goal for Cali Net is to create a host of applications that will allow hoteliers to market themselves effectively through direct means. He has already registered some 200 domain names such as hotelsupplies, hotelstore and hotelbargains, all of which could be turned into business-to-business (B2B) sites for the hotel industry.
Together with applications like the Internet guestbook and the new web page technology, Edwards believes these developments can make a significant difference to the success of hotel operations.
He cites the example of when he joined his parents at the Dunalastair in 1997, after graduating from St Andrews University. At that time, the hotel was not listed with the Scottish Tourist Board's quality rating scheme.
"I wanted things to happen tomorrow, and they couldn't, because it takes a year to get into these guidebooks," he said.
But while the Internet is a rapid way of reaching the market, it still has limitations.
For example, hoteliers whose web sites are hosted by a third party can't directly change information on those pages. Instead, they must pass those changes on to the hosting company, who in turn makes the alterations.
This makes it difficult to change daily items such as the chef's specials, and inserting data such as last-minute deals can also be difficult. Edwards said the development of Cali Net's new product came about as its customers asked to be able to do these things themselves.
While it has obvious implications for the hotel industry, both Edwards and Shearer recognise that it could have much wider appeal. Shearer, whose parents own the Columba House Hotel in Kingussie, said he had thought about offering it to other types of companies in the more distant future.
"Whether we shift out into any other markets is up to us, but you don't want to give up a market where you are the leader," he said.
|
|
