Tryon Events Goes Live

kiveo and The Town of Tryon have partnered to present a new way of finding local events for tourists and locals alike. kiveo's customized CMS (Content Management System) implements several key features that Travel and Tourism events managers require to operate effectively:

• Places Management
  • The ability to tie a location to several events. By default, when an event is associated with a location, the database creates a reciprocal link, so that when the location page is pulled up, a list of upcoming events is displayed to entice the user to explore further.
  • The ability to tie together several locations (IE - A hotel, the restaurant at the hotel and the golf course)
  • Google Maps integration. While more sophisticated mapping capabilities exist than have been implemented in TryonEvents.org, the ability to quickly see a map of the surrounding area and hyperlink to the Google Maps site to get directions is highly enticing to end-users.
• Events Management
  • Linking events to other events in the database. An example would be tying a concert on Friday night to the Horse Show on Saturday afternoon and the Flea Market on Sunday. This type of flexibility allows site owners to provide sample itineraries to bring in prospective tourists for more than the few hours on Saturday for the concert.
  • Linking events to several locations. Sure, most events happen at a given location, but what about the Pub Crawls or Beautiful Homes tours? These events need the ability to link out to several events and sometimes several sponsors, without going to lengths to type and re-type all of the information.
  • Event exporting and iCal / vCal standards. Your event data has a calling beyond the words you put onto the webpage. Offering end-users the ability to export an event as an iCal file (compatible with hundreds, if not thousands of desktop and web-based calendaring applications) allows them to quickly add an event from the site to their personal calendar.
• Custom Search Engine
  • Each event or location entered into the database also appears in a custom search engine for the site. The thought behind this is twofold: provide end users the ability to search a specific sub-set of sites for the area and secondly to provide an SEO benefit for location and event websites by appearing as a directory of information for Google, MSN (Bing), and Yahoo. Each website is spidered daily to pick up additions and changes and is put through a rigorous algorithm to pick out key words and phrases from each webpage.
• Integrated Social Networking
• Every page on the site is supplied with a unique "short URL" from kiveo's kurl.it service. These short URLs are small enough to to be tweeted or posted to Facebook without taking up too many characters on the often limited microblogging formats.
• kiveo has implemented this "sharing" feature with the following providers: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (because business people plan vacations and retreats, as well), MySpace, del.icio.us and digg.