Tourism Content Platform Call-For-Proposal

March 2011

Background

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has been driving technological innovation and adoption in the local tourism industry by supporting the R&D and implementation of innovative technology projects which either enhance visitors’ experience or value add to tourism enterprises. To date, there are healthy signs of growth for the tourism sector – $13.7 billion tourism receipts as at end-2010. Singapore has enjoyed a steady increase of visitor arrivals throughout 2010, resulting in twelve consecutive months of record arrivals of 11.6 million visitors..

With the healthy tourism outlook and ever increasing numbers of visitors to Singapore, it has become necessary to leverage on technology to provide new services and products to the visitors. Globally, the use of digital media and mobile applications is picking up speed as companies hope to leverage on technology to transform visitors’ experience. Innovative applications such as augmented reality way finding, location based services and tourist services on the mobile are leading the way in this transformation.

Locally, many technology companies and tourism businesses see the opportunity to leverage on technology to tap into the lucrative tourism sector. STB has been inundated with proposals ranging from island wide tourist concierge devices to mobile applications catering to niche travelers. These companies come armed with the technological know-how and experience to execute these game changing concepts.

However, STB has identified a barrier in creating these innovative products and services for tourism. Although well positioned technically, many of the incumbents are lacking content to put on their devices and applications. Without such content it is unlikely the demand of front end products and services will be met. This is because the barrier of creating the content for such products and services is too high for many and not sustainable for others.

Call-for Proposals

To support the development of the tourism industry, STB will be partnering MDA/IDMPO to jointly call for proposals for an innovative content  aggregation service and management platform that will help catalyse further development of tourism related applications and services.  These proposals should be aimed at developing new content aggregation business models with a content management infrastructure for supporting commercialization efforts of tourism applications and services.

Details on STB and MDA/IDMPO’s schemes to support the prototyping, test bedding and commercialization activities under the joint-CFPs are as follow.

Content Aggregation and Management Platform Call : Tourism Content Platform

The intent of this call is to aggregate STB and private sector content onto a single platform and catalyse a workable business model that enables content to be updated and new content to be developed by the private sector.

This centralized platform brings together both existing content and newly developed content that allows re-purposing into various visitor facing applications (eg. mobile device, website, etc) by technology companies for tourism enterprises.

Interested companies are welcome to submit proposals which should include:

• The creation of a infrastructure platform to pull together content related to tourism (includes images, write ups, videos and audio content of tourism locations/establishments) and offer them from a centralized source.
  • This infrastructure should ideally be hosted on a cloud solution.
  • This infrastructure should also be able to host content to be deployable onto various front-end applications.
• The creation of a content management application which is able to index, search, tier content and manage Intellectual Property (IP) rights of the content.
• The business plan on how content is to be aggregated and updated within the platform, as well as utilized.
• Timelines, key project milestones and estimated cost of project implementation. The proposal should include a prototype phase which would test basic assumptions on the proposed concept and evolve the concept appropriately.

STB’s Background

STB is the country’s leading economic development agency in tourism, one of Singapore’s key service sectors. Known for forging partnerships, driving innovation and ensuring excellence, the Board champions tourism and builds it into a key economic driver for Singapore. Together with its tourism promotion functions, it also fulfils a much broader economic development role for the tourism sector.

STB aims to ensure that tourism remains a key economic pillar through long-term strategic planning in partnership with the public and private sector stakeholders. STB’s goal is to create exciting and innovative experiences for our visitors, in close partnership with the trade industry, thus etching forever in visitors’ minds an image of Singapore as a unique and compelling destination. For more information on STB, please visit www.stb.gov.sg.

STB’s detailed offerings include the following to support qualified proposals:

• Co-funding 50% of qualifying cost
• STB provides support and promotion for TCP as the definitive source for Singapore Tourism content
• Facilitation to reach out to tourism industry stakeholders
• Strong partnerships with key government agencies (e.g. IDA) to extend reach
• Marketing opportunities through STB’s regional offices

MDA /IDMPO’s CFP Funding Criteria

Appointed incumbent/s will be eligible for funding support from STB and/or MDA – IDMPO funding schemes. Funding support for this CFP is structured based on a Co-funding mechanism where STB/MDA will fund up to 50% of qualifying project costs and the incumbent has to invest in the remainder of the cost.

Qualifying Costs include (but not limited to)

• Professional Costs
• Software Development
• Design cost
• Hardware & Software required
• Content Licensing & Business Development costs

It should be noted that funding from STB/MDA will not support the following activities:

a)      Any hardware and software costs not related to the project (e.g. operating system, anti-virus, Microsoft Office)

b)      Maintenance costs

c)      Marketing costs

d)     Ongoing administrative costs of organizations

e)      Operating expenditure not directly related to the project

The proposals are assessed and approved by an evaluation panel consisting of representatives from STB and MDA. Applicants will be assessed based on the evidence of their ability and commitment to successfully manage and deliver the project. Candidates may be required to attend an interview after the closing date.

Responding to the Call for Proposal

To submit a proposal, complete the submission templates and send it to the emails listed below.

For CFP proposals, please indicate in the subject header [Proposal for STB/MDA TCP CFP – “YourCompany Name” ], email it to: darren_seah@stb.gov.sg:

Successful applicants will receive an email reply jointly by STB and the partners on the outcome of their applications.

In response to feedback from industry members, we are extending the deadline for submission to 30th April 2011

Period of Call:  7 Mar 2011 to  30 April 2011
Please submit your proposals to the emails specified above by 30 April 2011, 2359 hrs

Milestones and Deliverables

The key outcome at the end of the project should be a centralized tourism content platform with a business model that ensures sustainability and continuous update of content.

Development milestones and deliverables will be determined by STB and the partner(s). Disbursement of funding will be on a reimbursement basis and administered by STB.

Between milestone submissions, STB and partners may organize demo/ feedback sessions where team members will be required to showcase and demonstrate work-in-progress builds for play-testing and feedback gathering.

All assets (for example, source code and technology) and copyrights to the completed projects will belong to the applicants. STB reserve the right to use the projects including the content therein for non-commercial and publicity purposes.

The STB and partners will require due credits in the website and all promotional & publicity programmes / materials of the completed product as acknowledgement for the support and assistance rendered by the STB and partners under the initiative.

Applicants are expected to undertake and complete the project upon official approval from panel review.

Termination of Project

In the event that the applicant decides to terminate the project, the applicant would have to compensate STB or its partners by refunding the entire sum of funds which has been disbursed to applicants at the time of termination.

Resources

Interested applicants may wish to refer to the STB/MDA CFP slides (download  slides), MDA IDMPO (download slides) and  submission template (download submission template ).

Enquiries

For enquiries, please contact:

STB – Darren Seah, darren_seah@stb.gov.sg