MINTOUR gives the tourist up-to-date information
The MINTOUR (Multimedia Information Network for Tourism) project has been completed. The project, which is a public service European Multimedia Information Network that promotes the European tourism sector, aims to give the tourist information in as short time as possible. MINTOUR utilises the concept of a virtual database by integrating the common element of the various tourism databases of all national or regional authorities involved in the project. The MINTOUR system is composed of four servers, located in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, Rome and Athens. In addition, a LabServer is available in Madrid. Once the system had been set up and tested with the first versions of the user modules, it became clear that a new module not included in the definition of the project was required. This was the module for the administration of the database. Without the module, this task was tedious and the person responsible had to know the structure of the database extremely well. A new module was called for, and the Admin-User Module, with a user-friendly interface was designed to simplify the administration tasks on the MINTOUR system. The most important part of MINTOUR is user interaction. There are four main users to be taken into account. Offer-users are usually public organisations that provide general information; sale-users are members of the tourism sector; admin-user is the one who maintains the technical system; and, end-users are mainly people planning a trip or who have already arrived at their destination and want to further information. End-users can trust that the information in the MINTOUR system is accurate and up-to-date because it is provided by national and regional tourist authorities. The MINTOUR project has been funded under the European Commission's research programme within the field of Information Technology (ESPRIT).