• Overdue Jun 7, 2019

    National consultancy: Booking portal development for the Destination Management Unit (DMU) Kivu Belt

    Employer: GIZ Rwanda
    Posted: 24 May 2019
    Share

    Expression of Interest

    National consultancy: Booking portal development for the Destination Management Unit (DMU) Kivu Belt

    A. General Context of Eco-Emploi 2016 - 2019

    Rwanda has maintained steady growth and macroeconomic stability for the past 15 years, between 2002 and 2016 real GDP growth averaged at about 9% per annum. However, the rate of unemployment and underemployment is high and most of those in employment still work in poorly paid positions, above all in agriculture. The vast majority of youth leaves schools hardly equipped for the labour market. A strong middle class that could provide for a solid foundation for the country’s economy does not exist.

    The programme Eco-Emploi is part of the priority area “Sustainable Economic Development” of the Rwandan-German Development Cooperation and will be implemented between June 2016 and December 2019. Eco-Emploi embodies an integrated approach of technical and vocational education and training, labour market interventions and private sector development. It supports the economic sectors ICT, wood economy, tourism, creative industries [above all audio-visual business] and E-Commerce-Logistics. The economic empowerment of women and people living with disabilities are a cross-cutting effort in all activities of the programme.

    Eco- Emploi’s success is mainly defined by the amount of jobs that are created through the programme’s activities. For more information, please visit EcoEmploi’s homepage: http://ecoemploi.org/

    B. Rationale of the assignment

    1) Description of assignment:

    In September 2017, within the framework of the program Eco-Emploi of GIZ, in collaboration with tourism stakeholders from the Kivu Belt region, a workshop for the establishment of a joint Destination Management Unit (hereinafter) of the three areas Rubavu, Karongi and Nyungwe took place. The objective of this workshop was to enable participants to commit and take responsibility to promote the Kivu Belt region jointly as a tourist destination and agree on collective actions that can contribute to the growth of the region. They identified various challenges and opportunities for tourism in the area and proposed actions that can be implemented to address these issues in the upcoming months. The responsibility of the DMU is to coordinate all tourism actors and activities in the area. Linked to the activities of the DMU is the digitalization of the Kivu Belt marketing including the creation of a website.

    In this regard, Eco-Emploi would like to hire a national consultant to build a booking portal for the webpage of the DMU Kivu that enables businesses in the tourism sector to promote and manage their business and allow user interested in the region to inform and book tourism related services.

    2) Process and methodology of the assignment:

    The objective of this assignment is to:

    Create a booking portal with all related technological requirements. Booking portal defined as an online booking engine that features a lot of touristic offers at one place. The features shall include the booking of hotels, touristic activities, transport and other services online. The scope for this assignment will be a limitation to the Kivu Belt region which includes mainly businesses in the Western Province.
    Integrate the booking functionality into the existing webpage kivubelt.travel.
    On board all relevant tourism companies represented on the platform
    Manage and continue to develop it actively for a period of one year
    Scope: As registered members in the Chamber of Tourism, there are a total of around 100 tour operators, 400 hotels, 140 guides plus a small number (around 20) of community based projects.. That makes a minimum of 660 users for the portal in a final stage. Adding transport and other tourism actors a more realistic estimate would be around 1000. The Kivu Belt region has been chosen as a pilot region. Therefore, in this stage, only businesses located in the Kivu Belt or offering services in the Kivu Belt will be considered – these will be around 100 – 200 companies.

    The consultant should:

    • Develop hosting requirements for the booking portal. These will include content to do with data backup, security etc.
    • Offer and maintain APIs for at least 2 international booking portals towards the business users of the platform.
    • Perform all the necessary activities related to the deployment of the booking portal.
    • Integrate at least 3 online payment options working on an international scale. The consultant tasks will be to identify different options and negotiate on behalf of the Kivu Belt private businesses.
    • Integrate at least one payment option working on the regional scale.
    • Offer a warranty for a period of 2 years for the system.
    • Insert all content provided by the Chamber of Tourism and GIZ Eco-Emploi.
    • Train users and the web administrator.
    • Provide documentation for the site that shall include the functional specifications, system documentation, user manual, administrator manual, test reports, etc.
    • Offer a helpdesk for its business and tourist customers to offer support in all aspects of the booking portal.
    • The contractor shall recommend other pages and features that will optimize the end user experience.

      2.1) Methodology

    In the following paragraph the methodology will be described divided in different steps.

    Step 1: Coordination meeting and functional specifications document

    The consultant is expected to meet the Chamber of Tourism & GIZ Eco-Emploi to understand the needs of the booking portal, so as to develop a suitable solution. The outcome of this meeting will be a functional specifications document to be agreed and signed by the Chamber of Tourism & GIZ Eco-Emploi. The specification document will highlight the booking functionality, details and identified needs of the DMU Kivu Belt such as define goals and indicators. It shall also include management solutions for tourism companies to display their products and offer automated business reports and analytics for tourist companies. The specifications shall also cover the use case functionalities for tourism companies to manage their bookings. In addition, the specifications propose a hosting concept for one year including security, backup and availability measures to avoid data compromises.

    Step 2: Booking portal development

    The development of the booking portal shall include the following stages:

    • Design of the tourism platform and the booking system (front end)
    • Supervision of the technical setup of the basic system (CMS, Booking systems, Billing systems)
    • Supervision of all system setups (back end)
    • Supervision of the implementation of general back end processes
    • Import of basis data of the companies in the Kivu Belt region
    • Review data implementation
    • Process implementation (Bookings, Billing)
    • Preparation of rollout / going live and supervision and follow-up of rollout / going live

    Step 3: Validation and testing

    The booking portal shall be tested by DMU, Chamber of Tourism & GIZ Eco-Emploi and the users. Any needed changes shall be adopted by the consultants. The total care of hosting will be for a period of one year according to the specifications.

    Step 4: Training of key user groups

    The addition of a booking functionality into the Kivu Belt Portal is an integral part to convert the marketing efforts of the DMU into economic growth. A key aspect of the booking portal is there for the ability of tourism companies to manage their inventory in a more efficient way. To achieve this goal the booking portal should be customized for the digital skills of tourism businesses in the Kivu Belt. For this reason, an online and offline training (3 workshops at different locations in the Kivu Belt plus information material for the key users has to be organized in order to capacitate them in the use of the booking portal and billing procedures.

    3) Reporting and cooperation:

    The consultant will report to the Principal Technical Advisor of Eco-Emploi Programme and the implementation of the assignment will be closely monitored by the DMU-team of the Chamber of Tourism and Eco-Emploi’s tourism team. Steps and activities of the assignment will be decided together with the Chamber of Tourism & GIZ Eco-Emploi.

    C. Deliverables:

    • Functional Specifications Document agreed and signed by the DMU, Chamber of Tourism and GIZ Eco Emploi
    • Booking Portal
    • Functional specifications, hosting concept and design screen mock-ups in a document.
    • Onboarding of tourism companies connected with the DMU
    • Data analytics, business reports, and payment integration
    • Helpdesk concept

    3) Key User Training

    Develop and facilitate at least 3 offline trainings for tourism companies
    Create a comprehensive online tutorial explaining the different workflows of the booking portal

    D. Timeframe of the assignment

    The assignment is to start on the 15th of July, 2019. All final products have to be handed in by December 15th, 2019. The number of working days might change depending on the consultant’s offer and discussions with DMU, Chamber of Tourism & GIZ Eco-Emploi.

    E. Key characteristics of consultant(s)

    For the assignment, the following characteristics and competencies are essential:

    The consultant or company should have strong experience (at least 3 years) on web development and product development, and provide a corresponding portfolio with containing examples of his/her achievements.

    • He/she should have a Bachelor’s degree in a related field (IT, software development, etc.)
    • He/she should show fluency in current trends in website design, functionality, and interactivity. Proven experience in successful web development in the tourism industry.
    • He/she should show an understanding of End Users needs and ability to match with technical solutions.
    • He/she should have experience in the development of booking portals in Rwanda or East Africa.

    E. Contact

    In case of questions regarding the assignment, please contact us at procurement-rw@giz.de. Please note that for a fair tender process, we only point to publicly available information.

    F. Application

    Qualified and interested candidates are hereby requested to apply. The application should contain the following:

    • A Technical Proposal with brief description of why the Consulting Firm/Consultants would be considered as the most suitable for the assignment, relevant expertise, and a detailed clear methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment.
    • The Technical Proposal should also contain key staff CV(s) indicating education background/professional qualifications, all past experience, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the experts.
    • Information about legal status (copy of RDB certificate, RRA certificate, etc.)
    • Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs. The cost must be in RWF and VAT excluded.

    Please submit your offers documents in separated envelopes (1 for technical offer and 1 for the financial offer) until latest Friday, 07 June 2019 at 4:00 pm, at the front desk of

    GIZ – Kigali Office

    KN 41Ave, N° 17 – Kiyovu

    B.P 59 Kigali – Rwanda

Popular Jobs

  • imyanya 22 y’akazi- RWANDA EDUCATION BOARD
  • Imyanya 10 y’akazi muri REG
  • 10 job vacancies - MININFRA
  • EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF CELL
  • 9 job positions - Green Hills Academy