The project aims to realise a consumer-oriented system for developing the tourist potential of European cities by providing communications-based services to a significant sample of people in selected geographic areas and by making what the involved areas have to offer the tourist known to the largest possible community of networked users: the Internet. MILLION assumes as a starting point the phenomenon of civic networking, in progress in several cities in the EU (as in Bologna and in Venice), and aims to build a system which will make it possible to move on from giving civic information to citizens at no charge to providing services to the consumer for payment, first of all in the field of tourism.

The communication services to be provided can be grouped into two main categories: a) information services given by agencies promoting tourism and by local authorities at no charge; b) information and transaction-based services, offered by private providers for payment.

The whole application will be developed as an enhanced and integrated Worldwide Web (WWW) server architecture on standard platforms using both existing and new hardware and software technologies. Access through advanced presentation systems with integrated tools will be available on all major industry-standard platforms and mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). From the technical standpoint, the consortium will address the following state-of-the-art issues with regard to the WWW environment:

- dynamic links to relational databases
- electronic payment
- wireless use of WWW browsing on PDAs
- issues concerning voice services.

They are considered to be key factors for success for the following reasons:

- Large multimedia databases and unstructured information are to be provided by tour operators, agencies promoting tourism and public authorities. Dynamic linking to external database systems and other IT tools will be developed to enable better real-time access, query and update functionality compared with existing information systems.
- Transactions for services need to find their way through the net in order to enable real home shopping with a single homogeneous interface between customers and providers, avoiding duplicate procedures. Software for electronic payment will be integrated into the system to provide new transaction services.
- True mobility and remote connectivity is a key issue in the domain of emerging and future services. Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) will be used to provide mobile access and flexible tools for use off-line or by wireless connection.
- Services to be provided need a greater degree of contact between provider and consumer than is available today on the net and direct live contact is often needed. New voice and text conferencing technologies embedded in the WWW architecture and external hardware-based technologies such as VocalFax, will be used for specialised customer services, conferencing and guided tours.

The final output will be a coherent and consistent system integrating the four technologies.