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NEWS RELEASE July 23, 2003 Contact: Tracie Cayford, (801) 538-8777 Scott Iverson, (801) 538-1324 STATE LAUNCHES NEW TOURISM DATABASE Salt Lake City – The Utah Travel Council announced today the launch of a new online Utah! Travel Resources Database for businesses and organizations involved in travel and tourism in Utah. The Database, located at http://travel.utah.gov/trdatabase.html, is a secure, password-protected means of keeping public domain contact and other relevant information about Utah tourism businesses and organizations continually updated for use by the Utah Travel Council and other tourism industry users. According to J. Scott Iverson, publications manager for the Utah Travel Council, the need for a single, comprehensive travel-related database has existed for a number of years. “Until now, the Travel Council has been drawing on the databases of several sources. As a state agency, our hope is to provide the definitive source of public domain contact and services information, which can then be used by the respective industry groups to better serve their clients and constituents.” The Database will be available also to tourists or business travelers planning to visit Utah. The listing, through the division’s commercial website, http://utah.com, will give tourists and the general public a source where they can search much of the data found on the industry database. “Our hope is to broaden the scope of what is contained in the Database to include any and all businesses or organizations which provide services or goods to Utah’s travel and tourism industry,” said Spence Kinard, assistant director of the Utah Travel Council. “These could include anything from hotels and motels, to restaurants, to chambers of commerce and CVB’s, to museums and gift shops, to churches and fraternal organizations,” he said. “The primary benefit is to the respective travel and tourism businesses in Utah, who can now be assured that their information is correct and up-to-date because they can update and maintain it themselves as often as they like,” said Iverson. Both Kinard and Iverson underscored the fact that the Database is not to be used as a commercial vehicle for third-party solicitations. All of the information contained in the Database may be found in the public domain, but the Database will not be available to non-tourism third parties as a single, complete file for commercial purposes. # # #
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