TravelBritain and a conglomerate of Regional Tourism Boards (RTB) have launched a new national distribution system, providing information on tourism products and destinations.

EnglandNet, an internet-based platform, will connect all the local and regional destination management systems (DMS) via the RTBs across the country.

Holidaymakers planning to travel either to or within Britain,will then be able to access the information and book their holidays and visits online.

The scheme aims to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) within the British travel industry with the opportunity to radically enlarge their customer bases.

So far, distribution of travel products beyond their immediate localities has proven to be very costly to SMEs.

EnglandNet plans to offer SMEs access to wider national and international markets through a global distribution system, previously exclusive to major tour operators and airlines.

Thomas Thoillier, spokesperson for EnglandNet, said: “By channelling destination and attraction information to sales and marketing organisations, EnglandNet intends to overcome the historical go-to-market difficulties experienced in the tourism industry.

“We want to make it easier for travel agencies, distributors and holiday makers to find, book and pay for England’s tourism products,” he said.

In the past, it has been costly for distributors to reach all individual SMEs within the sector – believed to number well over 100,000.

The new initiative will solve this problem and enable smaller businesses to join the EnlandNet’s database, which is used by Tourist Information Centres and local authorities.

This in turn will allow the businesses – however small – to receive bookings or orders online, even if they do not have internet facilities allowing bookings themselves.

Thoillier said: “Our aim is to dramatically increase the number of bookings for businesses.

“The gateway site will be up and running by the end of March and by then we will have an initial database of around 60,000 to 70,000 products and destinations. Within two years, we will have developed the database to include all of the 120,000, VAT registered, tourism enterprises into the scheme,” he said.

EnglandNet was originally created – and funded – by the government two years ago. It began trading as a limited company in April 2003.

It has two shareholders, with VisitBritain owning 40 per cent and the RTBs in control of the remaining 60 per cent.

The scheme will charge its customers a subscription fee, in addition to a 10 per cent commission for each booking made via the EnglandNet platform. Details: www.englandnet.co.uk