STA Travel maximise Open Text Web Solutions to generate 75% of their entire revenue, online

1. STA Travel Strengthens Brand with
Multiple Country Sites
STA Travel is a world leader specializing in student travel, serving approximately six
million customers spread across 90 countries and employing more than 2000 people
worldwide. A firm believer in quickly delivering a variety of travel products, services and
advice through a mix of channels, the company has more than 350 retail branches located
around the world.
About STA Travel Challenge
As the world‘s largest student travel Over 80 percent of customers begin their
organization, the STA Travel Web site is an relationship with STA Travel on the internet.
important communication tool for engaging As a result, the STA Travel web site is a vitally
potential clients. Enriching and broadening important component to its marketing strategy
the customer experience by providing and gaining new business.
convenient and serviceable access to multiple
travel products, commodities and services is a quot;Typically, STA Travel customers are looking
necessary top priority for STA Travel. to enrich their travel experiences through
online access to relevant products, services
With 16 different web sites around the world, and advice at anytime, from anywhere
STA Travel wanted to find a cost-effective in the world,quot; says Peter Liney, Chief
way of ensuring a consistent, agreeable and Operating Officer at STA Travel. quot;By providing
homogenous, global Web presence for young, innovative new facilities such as access to
dynamic and knowledgeable individuals. user generated travel logs and personal
recommendations, we can greatly increase the
appeal of our sites.quot;

2. Solution
Part of STA Travel’s business strategy was
formulated to develop and implement a
Global E-commerce Technology Strategy
that would make expeditious deployment
and control across multiple Web sites
possible, while still offering the flexibility and
adaptability to tailor local content to local
needs and demands. RedDot was chosen as
the Content Management System that would
support the Global E-commerce Technology
Strategy for STA Travel‘s web solution.
One factor that attracted STA Travel to RedDot
was its short training time for Webmasters and
editors who would be managing and posting
content to the site through the intuitive user
RedDot has given us consistency across multiple global web sites
interface of the RedDot Content Management
guranteeing a good experience to everyone
Systems. With RedDot, STA Travel was able
to meet a highly aggressive and limiting
deadline with its due date arriving in less than
However, all of STA Travel’s 16 Web sites
6 months for the initial project launch.
operated independently, creating an
inconsistent brand and user experience when
To ensure that content was consistent
customers visited the site. Also, functionality
globally, STA Travel used RedDot’s strong
differed from site to site and providing
and easy to use localization capabilities for
cutting-edge technology at its global facilities
creating different language variants while
for its young, tech savvy audience proved
ensuring that the global appearance was kept.
costly.
Local offices are automatically notified when
“RedDot’s CMS has some new texts need to be translated and added to
the local versions of the STA Travel website.
really good features like the
Translation Editor.” Craig Hepburn, Global Webmaster at STA
Travel says. “RedDot’s CMS has some really
good features like the Translation Editor. This
Centrally controlling the content for all sites
ensures global consistency by enabling us to
was also a challenge, especially for keeping
create English language content centrally that
current in all languages with information that
editors around the world can then localize.”
changed daily or even on an hourly basis,
such as industry news, travel deals, top
For delivering contextualized content to
offers, discounts and flight availability.
visitors, STA Travel has been able to integrate
dynamic content from other relevant web
sites such as “Lonely Planet” and “What’s on
When” into its own site, providing a one-stop
destination for comprehensive, all-embracing
information and advice on travel locations.
STA Travel

3. Pulling content from a licensed system only top quality content. Now STA Travel can
known as “Off Exploring” enables STA provide the same value and serviceableness
Travel Web visitors to create their own user to all customers, regardless of location or
profiles and web sites and read other visitor market presence in a particular country.
travel journals. They can even get their own The customer experience has been
experiences printed in the form of a booklet. elevated compared to how it was before the
Keeping friends and family updated about implementation of the new website.
their trip was never before this simple.
Results
Throughout the implementation, STA was very
pleased with the level of service it received
from RedDot. “The team at RedDot were very
helpful when we needed some features that
were not already included in the content
management system. For example, the import
and export of shared content was added to
the product at our request,” says Hepburn.
STA Travel initially launched new sites in
the UK, Australia and the United States.
They plan on executing a site rollout for 13
RedDot enables intuitive use of the site and enables the user to quickly
additional countries soon. quot;We don‘t have a
find the informations they are looking for.
large in-house team to help with the rollout,quot;
says Hepburn. quot;But the way RedDot CMS is
designed makes it easy. We create one master
Hepburn says: “With our controlled template
project and rollout to the various countries,
environment developed by IBM and the
removing the need to recreate the whole
workflow processes included in RedDot’s
set-up every time. This saved us two to three
CMS, we feel comfortable letting non-technical
months of development work.quot;
people manage site content. The staff loves
quot;The way RedDot CMS is it – it gives them far more control and offers
a competitive advantage.” RedDot’s CMS has
designed makes it easy.quot; also helped STA Travel improve navigation
on its sites. Hepburn, explains: “Navigation
is more intuitive now and based on how
Since RedDot allows STA to control content
travellers typically approach a trip.”
from a centralized source, any template
changes are implemented and materialized
Liney states, “The survival of STA Travel
across the sites within minutes, thus saving
depends on having a successful online
STA staff members up to two weeks of manual
presence – it keeps us relevant. Our new
labor.
solution is meeting all our required business
objectives such as revenue generation,
As a result, customers are able to log into
improved online sales conversion rates and
their STA profile and view a consistent,
increased referral income. Crucially, IBM and
homogeneous and flawless brand providing
STA Travel Strengthens Brand with Multiple Country Sites

4. RedDot have equipped us to be far more agile,
STA Travel‘s developers are based in Germany. It was a real
keeping up with the latest online trends to
help that both RedDot and IBM could provide technical
benefit our business.”
resources in Germany. It meant that STA Travel received help
and guidance on the spot and this contributed to meeting
Since the implementation of the RedDot
the tight deadlines.
Content Management System around 20
per cent more product offerings could be
uploaded to the STA Travels Website. > Saskia Gaubig, IBM Senior Consultant on the GETS project
With RedDot, STA Travel’s Web
sites have enabled them to: Easily manage and publish content to the
Web, responding quickly to industry chan-
Improve employee productivity by elimina-
ges and travel updates
ting bottlenecks and better allocating staff
Satisfy customers by providing them with
and IT resources
quality products, travel expertise and
Increase cross training and knowledge sha-
excellent service, no matter where they are
ring among employees
located
About RedDot, The Open Text Web Solutions Group
Open Text Corporation is the largest independent provider of Enterprise Content Management
software and solutions. For more information about Open Text, please visit: www.opentext.com
Open Text Web Solutions Group with more than a decade of experience in Web
Content Management (WCM), provides Web-Centric ECM solutions to create, manage and
deliver the content that drives business. Open Text content management and delivery solutions
are recognised throughout the industry for their legendary ease of use and feature leading
multilingual support; enterprise Web 2.0 capabilities; content integration; and contextualised
delivery. From midmarket to enterprise, more than 2,600 clients around the world rely on Open Text
Web Solutions to create, manage and deliver personalised Web experiences for their Intranets,
Extranets and Web sites. For more information about The Open Text Web Solutions Group, please
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