TOURISM EXCHANGE GREAT BRITAIN LIMITED

TXGB Destination Cloud Platform

Tourism Exchange Great Britain (TXGB) is a B2B digital platform that connects the tourism sector, enabling stronger collaboration, knowledge transfer, increased trade, wider tourism dispersal and deeper insights from data in the platform.

TXGB provides tourism authorities with services that enable smarter and more sustainable marketing and management of destinations.

Features

• Cloud platform that connects destination product inventory to distributions channels
• Cloud platform to establish destination eCommerce platform for tourism businesses
• Digitally enable local providers that are not accepting online bookings
• Real-time view of bookings across all channels for local products
• Self-service onboarding workflow for local product providers with online support
• Destination dashboard with data visualisations to review booking trends
• API connectivity to cloud based booking systems to simplify onboarding
• API to enable integration with existing destination websites / apps
• PCI Compliant customisable toolkit enabling online bookability without API integration
• Automatic reconciliation of bookings and commission payments

Benefits

• Enables smart destination marketing and management utilising cloud technology
• Enables setup and operation of bookable destination marketing campaigns
• Centralises connectivity to booking systems reducing admin and manual allocations
• Enables development of actionable insights for local visitor economy
• Enables collection of marketable consumer data to create smarter campaigns
• Reduced costs and simplified technology through centralised cloud exchange solution
• Outcomes oriented destination marketing campaigns through real-time measurement
• Increased value, volume and dispersal of bookings in tourism sector
• Increases flexibility and choice for tourism authorities and local suppliers
• Enables sustainable growth of tourism economy through data-driven policymaking

£1,000 a unit a month

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at dan.simmons@txgb.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

781921018740222

Contact

Dan Simmons
0330 223 5050
dan.simmons@txgb.co.uk

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: No
• Cloud deployment model: Public cloud
• Service constraints: There are no constraints with this service. It is entirely controlled through a cloud based web interface.
• System requirements: No specific requirements - Entirely controlled via a web interface.

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Our dedicated support team is available during core business hours Monday - Friday 9am to 5pm. ; ; All requests sent by emails will be automatically be raised via our online ticketing system. ; ; All tickets will be responded to within 24 hours in all cases, but with a target of responding within 4 hours.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: Web chat
• Web chat support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support accessibility standard: None or don’t know
• How the web chat support is accessible: Web chat is available via the TXGB website. Users can speak directly with a member of the team during core business hours. Tickets can be raised directly within the web chat function.
• Web chat accessibility testing: Our current web chat provider is working towards WCAG 2.0 AA compliance and the web chat service has features that align to web content accessibility guidelines. The service is accessible to visually impaired users and differently-abled users. Some high-level accessibility features are: Screen Reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, visual focus indictors and sufficient colour contract in compliance with WCAG 2.0 level AA which requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: At TXGB our Service model can vary depending on the needs of our partner. ; ; As standard, our expert customer success team are at hand to support tourism businesses onboard with the platform and react to any queries, but our Customer Success team will also act in an account management capacity for individual tourism businesses, continue to review platform use and communicating opportunities proactively to optimise the value those businesses can achieve. ; ; Our Customer Success team is supplemented by second line application and infrastructure support teams as required, as well as proactive monitoring and alerting services to manage uptime; ; Standard service levels for tourism businesses using the platform are based on a Priority 1 to Priority 4 Service agreement, with associated target response and resolution times.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We offer comprehensive onboarding services to ensure implementation and rollout is successful within your organisation and to your partner network, including:; ; Onboarding at Destination level:; 1) User needs workshops with key stakeholders pre-launch; 2) Platform configuration; 3) Collaborative approach with marketing and comms teams; 4) Early adopter engagement. webinars and workshops with key industry partners as required; 5) Combination of training services for industry partners, including onsite and/or online training services; 6) Full documentation on system use is available.; ; Onboarding for your partners:; 1) Dedicated remote onboarding support per tourism supplier. ; 2) Ongoing guidance from customer success to maximise value return; 3) Comprehensive learning materials including online knowledge base, FAQs, user guides and 'how-to' videos
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats: HTML
• End-of-contract data extraction: The TXGB Digital Dashboard offers full reporting for all data on demand, meaning the user can export the full data set to CSV at any point.
• End-of-contract process: When a contract ends, access to platform services is removed through closed user accounts. ; ; Where applicable, API tokens related to associated integrations may also be revoked.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: Yes
• Differences between the mobile and desktop service: Various features of the TXGB toolset are designed to be compatible with mobile devices. TXGB Dashboards are accessed via a web browser, that is responsive to mobile devices. ; ; For partners that utilise the TXGB free booking page toolkit, they have the option of using a responsive grid option or alternative designs for mobile. Additional features are specifically designed for mobile, such as the capabilities to scan QR codes to redeem bookings using standard camera phones.
• Service interface: Yes
• User support accessibility: None or don’t know
• Description of service interface: TXGB providers a cloud based web portal for various participant types within the TXGB Destination Cloud Platform ecosystem. These include (a) a portal for tourism supplier businesses to review their product offerings, establish partnerships, and view booking data, (b) for a Distributor to access to view which suppliers have partnered with them and manage their profile listing on TXGB, and (c) for Destination partners to view booking data and insights across their region.
• Accessibility standards: None or don’t know
• Description of accessibility: The platform is primarily an B2B API driven booking exchange and the dashboard service is accessed via a web browser, Whilst this is not currently tested against the WCAG standards, we endeavour to work towards the recommendations outlined in the web content accessibility guidelines and we conduct regular browser compatibility testing.
• Accessibility testing: None to date but this can be completed as part of the service delivery.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: TXGB offers various API driven solutions to ensure the TXGB Destination Cloud Platform is open and connected and continues to grow through new partnerships. The main API use cases are as follows:; ; Distribution API: For Distribution partners to gain access to live availability, pricing and content for accommodation, tours, events and attractions – every kind of supplier, together in one place for the first time, by connecting to the TXGB Search and Book two way APIs. This makes it possible for DMOs or other online B2B or B2C sales channels to make product listings bookable. There are various opens available for use of this API, ranging from availability searching, booking fulfilment and payment processing.; ; Connected Technology API: We connect booking systems and aggregators to a wide range of distribution channels – from those in hard-to-reach markets to specialist niches (and everything in between). ; ; Information API: Ability to extract product and booking data via an API feed and use this to extract visitor and booking data and integrate with other organisation data sets to create powerful consumer insights; ; Our connectivity and engineering teams will work closely with any partner looking to integrate with one of our API services
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: HTML
• API sandbox or test environment: Yes
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: Destination partners can customise the scope of transaction data they have access to based on location. This is discussed and agreed during the scoping and set up phase of platform deployment ; ; All other customisation at tourism supplier or distributor level is core to the platform use. Including creating campaigns, styling booking pages, defining commission rates etc.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: We provide one combined set of resources covering the whole UK. This is automatically scaled at the resource level inside MS Azure. The variation in load/demand comes mainly from tourists using the system to find/book products; their searches may span beyond one destination both in terms of where they are looking, and the coverage of any multi-site product providers (eg: hotel chains). To that extent, independence / separation by destination within the UK is inapplicable. ; The service is wholly separated from similar provision in other geographies (AUS, Japan, etc), hosted in different servers in different datacentres/locations.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: TBC
• Reporting types:
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Managed by a third party
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: Another external penetration testing organisation
• Protecting data at rest: Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: MS Azure Data centre is managed to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 and NIST SP 800-53, and data is encrypted at rest using AES 256
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: TXGB Dashboard offers full data export of GDPR compliant booking and transaction data. Exports can be made by any user that is logged in to the dashboard and can be exported to CSV or XML format
• Data export formats: CSV
• Data import formats: Other
• Other data import formats: There are no data upload requirements for this service

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: 99.5% uptime guarantee per calendar month.
• Approach to resilience: Hosted solution provides a highly available solution to achieve 99.5% availability. Locally redundant storage (LRS) is used within an Azure datacentre. This protects the platform against hardware failures within the datacentre, however, does not protect against a datacentre outage. In the event of a datacentre outage (that would be complete outage of one of Microsoft's 2 UK data centres) we have backups to be able to restore in the other. However we do practically note that this would be a severe percentage reduction in the public cloud hosting capability in the UK, so is highly likely to impact many distributor and provider websites as well.
• Outage reporting: In the unlikely event of an outage, email communication would be made with all relevant customers - destinations, product providers (eg: hotels & attractions) and any distributors.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication: Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Internal technical administration requires VPN access restricted to appropriate staff. The majority of access from Destination Management staff would be through our dedicated administration interface, also used by tourism product providers across the UK. Access levels are controlled by allocation of roles and coverage of either specific products or geographies within the user account management of that interface. Access control changes can only be made by TXGB support staff.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: Yes
• Who accredited the PCI DSS certification: Stickman Consulting Pty Ltd
• PCI DSS accreditation date: 27/01/2022
• What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover: Any digital services that are not the core TXGB booking exchange platform (i.e. TXGB website)
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: No
• Security governance approach: We follow a detailed set of internal policies for security governance, data protection and secure management of our devices and service. All staff are fully aware of the details and the policies are regularly reviewed. These include device management and secure configuration, data and information sharing both electronic, verbal and by 'overhearing', managed use of our file storage and other systems, and a detailed understanding on GDPR and how it applies to our complex multi-party scenario, and what can be shared with our partner organisations (non exhaustive list)
• Information security policies and processes: All staff are briefed on information security policy covering their actions, their computer configuration and what can be shared and not shared electronically and via any other method (including customer confidentiality).; Allocation of access permissions - to staff, customers, destinations, providers etc - is documented via tickets in our support desk. Access to information is granted on a role / need to know basis internally.; Any indication of incorrect data, or misaccess / misuse of information should be reported through the ticketing helpdesk, and records made of investigations and contacts. If incorrect access or disclosure is identified, this should be raised via normal internal ticket escalation. Escalation includes access to experts in our parent/group companies to assess impact of severe breaches / GDPR implications, including our Data Protection Officer.

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: Changes to any component in the system are tracked through an appropriate development control platform, with details of change request, packaging for deployment, development testing, deployment testing and rollback. Security impact is considered both at development and pre-release testing phases.
• Vulnerability management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Vulnerability management approach: Critical patching of servers occurs within 7 days. Critical patching of software occurs within 1 month. We subscribe to and review security bulletins from Qualsys (general internet security / encryption in transit) and Microsoft (provider of hosting platform, operating system, database platform)
• Protective monitoring type: Undisclosed
• Protective monitoring approach: Daily reviews of PCI related logs are carried out. Any incidents are identified and action commenced within a day.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: User reported incidents (from tourist, provider or destination staff) are tracked through our ticketing help desk and triaged for actual security incidents; Operational monitoring, both our own custom check and those provided by our hosting provider (Azure) feed directly into the technical team. They review for impact and applicability, and take appropriate action, in compliance with our change management procedures.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: No

Social Value

• Fighting climate change:

  Fighting climate change

  TXGB is a tool to promote the volume of tourism in the UK and the dispersal of tourism in the UK. Both dimensions are key to reducing overseas travel and helping achieve net zero targets. ; ; Our platform is enabling new tourism distribution channels that specialise in slow tourism to create better propositions for UK consumers.; ; As a business TXGB is entirely distributed, meaning employees work from home most of the time and therefore do not contribute to inner city congestion.
• Covid-19 recovery:

  Covid-19 recovery

  We are deeply committed to playing our part in the economic recovery of the UK. TXGB is featured in the Tourism Recovery Plan published by DCMS, as a key tool in driving the economic recovery of the tourism sector - which was one of the sectors worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. ; ; Our platform is used by tourism authorities to create bookable campaigns, ensuring Government sponsored campaigns deliver tangible results for businesses. Beyond this our platform connects the fragmented (and as a result of COVID disrupted) distribution network with tourism businesses.
• Tackling economic inequality:

  Tackling economic inequality

  TXGB is a tool to increase the value, volume and dispersal of tourism in the UK market. While the tourism sector in the UK is a huge contributor to GDP, much of the inbound tourism market is focused on London. ; ; TXGB enables the other nations in the UK, and destinations outside London to create a smarter and more connected visitor economy. Ensuring local products are bookable online and featured in the distribution network, to ensure global consumers can easily look and book. ; ; In providing this service and working with tourism authorities our work actively contributes to driving value into the regions of the UK.; ; Beyond this our tooling for local tourism authorities allows them to capture sales commissions that would ordinarily (in most cases) be captured overseas, creating a virtuous loop of funding for local authorities around the UK.
• Equal opportunity:

  Equal opportunity

  At TXGB we are passionately an inclusive and equal opportunities employer. We are determined to ensure that no employee or applicant would receive less favourable treatment or opportunities on the grounds of their age, sex, race, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identify or religion.; We are deeply proud of our contribution to tackling workforce representation and inequality. Since our inception we have continually implemented inclusive recruiting, onboarding and people development processes. Our Smart Recruitment process reflects this. As a fully distributed remote workforce and through our flexible working policies, we actively encourage and support people back in to the workplace.; We have a diverse leadership team with a very flat operating structure, in which every opinion matters and is valued across our organisation. Our open working culture ensures our team are empowered, learn from each other and progress their career in line with business growth.

Pricing

• Price: £1,000 a unit a month
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at dan.simmons@txgb.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.