Latest internet business news : News: "Tiscover makes UK push London, March 5 2004, (netimperative) by Susie Harwood.

European online travel portal Tiscover has launched its first dedicated UK portal after winning deals to power websites for several major tourist boards here last year.

The company, which already has a European portal, Tiscover.com, as well as country-specific websites in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, said that it also plans to launch a portal in South Africa in the next several months. Karsten Karcher, director of sales, marketing and finance at Tiscover, said that the group will initially focus on these six markets, but did not rule out moving into other new countries if the company were to sign an important partnership elsewhere.

'The long-term goal is to provide tourist and destination information across a number of European countries,' said Karcher.

In the UK, Tiscover already has partnerships with the East England Tourist Board, Bournemouth City Council and Plymouth Marketing Bureau, and its UK portal will initially focus on these areas, before extending to cover more of the country.As well as providing lots of information on the destinations in these areas, the new Tiscover.co.uk website also enables visitors to book accommodation and services such as restaurants, theatre and local attractions online.

Karcher said the company has already signed deals with over 200 accommodation providers in these regions, which he expects to grow rapidly.
Tiscover takes a small fee for successful bookings, and also gets revenue from providing services and consultancy to destinations such as Bournemouth, where it powers the city-run tourist website, and software licence fees.The company joins an already crowded online travel market in the UK, and will find itself competing against a number of much bigger players, including Lastminute.com, which earlier this week made a £55m bid to acquire rival Online Travel Corp.

Karcher claims the company differentiates itself by focusing much more on destinations, providing a much wider range of information and accommodation in each destination, as opposed to the big travel sites, which tend to just focus on the bigger hotel chains.