Let’s get back to the notes (e.g. and ) on tourism portals:

If for classical portals the equations

are true, then the following conditions should improve the status from the viewpoint of the visitor of the site:

This is the way Bettr.info goes; instead of acting according to

Our direct customers are our advertising customers!

the essential idea underlying its actions is:

Our direct customers are the visitors of the portal!

When flicking through the article about it can easily be done another step: the huge amount of currently competing web portals is exclusively aimed at the following purposes:

• Optimization of search engines
• Manipulation of search engines
• Search requests: the linked web site to be positioned among the first few hits

The visitor’s immediate impression can be summarized as follows:

• Confusion and overloading due to a lot of information mounted up within a very short period of time
• Manipulated information due to paid top positions
• Low safety degree due to numerous unfiltered offers on the portal sites

One major objective can thus be identified:

To generate turnover for the portal provider or their direct customers (i.e. advertising customers).

There is an enormous variety of web sites on the South Tyrol to be found on the web, ranging from alpenregionen.info to wanderhotels.info, and their number has long since exceeded the 1,000 entries-mark:

Registered domains (.com, .net, .info, .biz, .us) refering to South Tyrol.

Just to give you an idea:

www.alpenregionen.info www.alpentourer.de www.altabadia.it www.altoadige-it.com www.antholzertal.net www.bozen.info www.camping-channel.info www.camping-suedtirol.it www.dolomiten.net www.dolomititour.com www.einfach-suedtirol.info www.eisacktal.net www.fewofeha.de www.gosuedtirol.it www.holidayhouses.de www.hotel.bz.it www.hotel-ritten.info www.last-minute-wellness.com www.live-style.it www.meinsuedtirol.com www.meranerland-hotel.com www.meran-hotel.de www.plandecorones.net www.pustertal.com www.ritten.info www.roterhahn.it www.sanvigilio.org www.schnalstal.info www.sudtirol.com www.südtirol.de www.suedtirol.com www.suedtirol.de www.suedtirol.info www.suedtirol.to www.suedtirol-altoadige.it www.suedtirolerhotels.de www.suedtirolerland.it www.suedtirolerland.it www.suedtirolerleben.com www.suedtirol-ferien.it www.suedtirolinformation.com www.suedtirolinformation.it www.suedtirol-it.com www.suedtirol-lastminute.com www.tauferer-ahrntal.eu www.unterkunft-vinschgau.com www.urlaub-ferien-bauernhof.com www.urlaub-fuer-unternehmer.de www.urlaub-suedtirol.it www.urlaub-suedtirol.it www.valvenosta-vinschgau.it www.vinschgau.info www.wanderhotels.info

According to this substantial increase of almost 50 domains per month in the last 14 months it can be assumed that the number of South-Tyrol-centred domains will not be diminishing in the near future.

What do all these web sites have to do with a portal?

According to Wikipedia.de a web portal is

… a site that provides a single function via a web page or site. Web portals often function as a point of access to information on the world wide web. Portals present information from diverse sources in a unified way … it aims at bundling regularly used services or providing an overview for entering a subject.

Having a look, however, at the „portals” leading the hit list after a corresponding search on google, one will find out that this definition does not apply to most of them.

Further reading on Wikipedia.de reveals a better description for the vast number of the above mentioned „portals“:

The denomination „web portal“ … is often falsely used for any web application.

So this is the gist of it: the term web portal is often mistaken for the term web application.

Bettr.info is supposed to act as a geo-holiday-join-in-rating-information portal for South Tyrol and any other region.

All the common and popular online-contents of portals such as descriptions, images, video clips, comments, links and further information are linked in an intelligent way.

By means of a sophisticated map service all the available general information is put into a geographical and thus local context.

Head words such as geoinformatics, portal, widget, user generated content, social bookmarking, RSS feeds, rich content or generally web 2.0 are supposed to gain a certain degree of popularity also in the land of apples and wine.

„Our name is our motto“, was written earlier. A google search for this motto delivers some 366,000 hits whereby it might be doubted whether the motto always follows the name or vice versa. Our portal is to stand out among this bulk of offers exactly because better information, „Bettr.info“ is offered.

After numerous trials on design we now have a logo with clear lines, high recall value, further emphasizing our mission with the slogan „the cherry on top“ and finally with the beta hint paying tribute to „Perpetual Beta“ and regular further development.