The Belize Tourism Board (BTB) is the legislated body designed to govern, enhance and promote the Belize tourism product. The BTB undertakes numerous strategic initiatives as well as the implementation of tourism policies to address the changing needs of the tourism industry. The organization’s goal is to ensure the socioeconomic growth of Belize through prudent, transparent and effective governance.

TravelBelize.org provides an engaging experience to adventurous travelers and drives prospective travelers to book a trip to Belize. The website helps travelers learn more about the unique experiences of Belize by establishing a dynamic and emotional connection between the traveler and the country.

Why Drupal was chosen: 

There were three main criteria in choosing the content management system (CMS) for Belize’s new digital experience: it had to be simple for authors to use with minimal or no training, it had to be well supported and it had to have the ability to grow to accommodate future functionality. This made Drupal a perfect fit for the BTB’s digital needs. The approachable cost frees up budget for innovation and additional features. Drupal’s simple interface provides a faster time to market and exhibits a large support base via community-contributed modules. Because it’s not tied to a proprietary CMS, Drupal also offers maximum flexibility.
With so many outside stakeholders contributing to the site without formal CMS training, Drupal was able to ease this process with Workbench, a workflow for approving partner-added content. BTB’s team receives an email whenever new content is added, requiring approval for the additions before they’re published to the live site. With this, BTB can offer travelers specialized, relevant information to plan the finer details of their adventure.

Using Drupal’s Multisite feature, there was no incremental cost to add the two other sites run by the BTB: TravelTrade, an agent education and specialist certification site, and Media. Multisite represents an iterative way BTB can continue to add value using Drupal, with all three sites—and any future sites—hosted on the same platform.

Rather than relying on a pre-made starter theme, ICF Olson created a custom theme architecture for the Belize site. The theme is inherited directly from the parent page and allows a high degree of control over the markup. Elements like the master stylesheets and base templates are created in the parent theme and can be shared with child pages—or a complimentary subtheme can be created.

This combination of Multisite and a unique theme architecture allows bug fixes to flow to all pages, updating them all at once. By using the Acquia Lightning starter kit and installing the Meta Tag Module, BTB can also meta tag each site page or tag by content type, further improving SEO and Google search results with key terms travelers look for in conjunction with Belize.

Some travelers to Belize know where they want to go (a beach town like San Pedro) but don’t know what they want to do when they get there. Others know what they want to do (tour cultural heritage sites), but don’t know what part of the country is ideal for those types of activities. By defining taxonomy vocabularies and establishing relationships between destinations, accommodations and activities, it’s now easier for a traveler to build an itinerary that suits them, even with limited knowledge of the region.

Overall, the move to Drupal gave the BTB more power to curate and publish engaging content, while ICF Olson continues to fill a dedicated support role for BTB to provide enhancements to the site.

Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome): 

For years, the Belize Tourism Board found it challenging to attract tropical vacation seekers. With only five percent media share and marketing efforts that played into category clichés, it was difficult for a small, developing country like Belize to compete with established destinations like Mexico, Hawaii, and The Bahamas.

That changed in 2012 when the BTB partnered with ICF Olson to help them reboot and re-energize their marketing approach.

ICF Olson started by getting to know Belize: they talked with visitors, ate at roadside barbecue stands and went fishing with locals. They discovered a different Belize, full of personality, soul, and wonderfully unspoiled character. They found that, at its heart, Belize is not a place for tourists, but for travelers—people who were more interested in one-of-a-kind experiences than walks on the beach or massages by the pool.

Research showed that these travelers start by planning their journeys online, so a website that piqued their curiosity with an engaging experience was critical to success. In partnership with BTB, ICF Olson not only delivered an attention-grabbing website, they created a way-finding system that let travelers navigate the country as they planned their trip.

Belize’s lift in tourism is now outpacing the rest of the Caribbean, leading to airline route expansions and a 39.1% increase in overnight arrivals (when comparing EOY 2016 to EOY 2012). As the Belize tourism industry has grown, their website needed to be limber enough to accommodate the shifting needs of visitors as well as the BTB staff and partners. This led to the re-platform of travelbelize.org on Drupal 8, creating a simplified content management and contribution process. The upgrade allows BTB’s partners—such as hoteliers and tour operators—the ability to create and maintain information in a simple, but effective, workflow.

ICF Olson’s work has contributed to a 2.24% increase in Belize’s GDP and has allowed for their most successful year in the past twenty.

BTB is already reaping the rewards of reinventing their brand and digital presence. ICF Olson’s work has given the Belize Tourism Board an excellent foundation from which they can grow and optimize over time. With the groundwork laid to translate the Travel Belize site (and the Partner Deals Page) into five different languages, the BTB now offers site access to a broader pool of visitors. ICF Olson continues to partner with the BTB in a variety of ways, including providing enhancements to the site wherever possible.

Technical specifications

Drupal version: 
Drupal 8.x
Key modules/theme/distribution used: 
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen: 

By leveraging the Acquia Lightning starter kit and installing the Meta Tag Module, BTB can tag each site page or tag by content type, further improving SEO and Google Search results for key terms travelers search for in conjunction with Belize.

Drupal’s Multisite feature allowed two other sites to be added for no incremental cost.

Organizations involved: 
Sectors: 
Travel and Hospitality