LONDON -- More than three dozen Continental cities joined forces to
collectively present their discount "city card" visitor passes at
one Internet site in hopes of easing travel planning for travel
agents and their clients alike.
The new European Cities Tourism Web site, at www.europeancitycards.com, offers information or
online booking for passes from 36 cities and towns, from Budapest,
Hungary, and Tallinn, Estonia, in the east to Granada, Spain, and
Lisbon, Portugal, in the southwest.
City cards and visitor passes typically offer travelers free
admission or discounts at museums and attractions as well as at
restaurants and shops and on public transportation systems.
Angus Rankine, chairman of European Cities Tourism and founding
director of Leisure Pass Group, purveyor of two city cards -- for
London and York, England -- said the new site, in time, should
become a "one-stop shop" for travelers visiting multiple European
destinations.
"It's going to make travel agents' lives considerably easier, so
they don't have to go hunting at each individual tourist board's
Web site for city-card information," he said.
Very much still a work in progress, the site at press time
offered three levels of functionality for the city-card
product.
Three of the cards -- the Stockholm Card from the Stockholm
(Sweden) Visitors Bureau and the commissionable London Pass and
York Pass from the Leisure Pass Group -- can be reserved and paid
for at the site.
Meanwhile, detailed information and contact links are provided
for cards from three additional cities -- Barcelona, Spain;
Brussels; and Innsbruck, Austria -- while basic data is posted
about the remaining 30 passes.
Complete information and links for all passes should be on line
at the site by September, and city cards for Amsterdam, Berlin and
Gothenburg, Sweden, will be available for Web purchase soon,
Rankine said.
In addition, city-card programs from Moscow, Paris and up to 10
other municipalities will join the European Cities Tourism effort
by year's end.
For more information and a list of participating cities, visit
www.europeancitycards.com or call Leisure Pass Group
direct at (011) 44-207 580-8060.
To contact reporter Kenneth Kiesnoski, send e-mail to [email protected].