• El Salvador and Microsoft praise the technological talents
of the Ministry of Tourism.
The web site of the Honduran Ministry and Institute of Tourism
- www.letsgohonduras.com - received the 2003 “La
@ de Oro” Award for promoting the country in September
in El Salvador. Each year the award goes to the Central American
organization that exhibits the greatest technological talents
in its field of specialty. The Let’s Go Honduras site
was chosen for its effective and efficient promotion of Honduran
tourism, investments, services and products, both nationally
and internationally.
“La @ de Oro” - the golden @ -- is a joint
initiative launched last year by ElSalvador.com, a branch
of the El Diario de Hoy newspaper, and the Microsoft Corporation.
It is aimed at promoting excellence in the use and development
of the Internet throughout Central America.
Let’s Go Honduras is Central America’s largest
interactive web portal. Created by Honduras’ Ministry
and Institute of Tourism and operated in cooperation with
Credomatic de Honduras, the site offers Internet users, and
especially tourists, a tool that not only highlights the country’s
main tourist destinations, but also provides key information
about the country and enables a variety of online transactions
such as making hotel and vehicle reservations and purchasing
tourist packages. The site brings e-commerce to life in Honduras.
Credomatic brings to the strategic alliance six years of
experience in electronic transactions and more than 25 years
offering credit card and commercial banking services. For
more than a year now the company has helped www.letsgohonduras.com
offer users effective and immediate answers to their needs,
at the same time providing full security in all online credit
card transactions.
More than 600 web sites were nominated for 2003 “La @
de Oro” awards, whose categories included Best Foreign
Company Site, Best Foreign Government or Association Site, Best
Foreign Personal Site and Best Foreign Banking and Finance Site.
Let’s Go Honduras won the award for Best Country Promotion
Site after being approved by a qualifying jury and undergoing
a voting process that included 25,000 voters throughout the
region. Results were audited and tabulated by the international
firm KPMG and contest organizers.
The qualifying jury included: Cecilia Figueroa, Director
of television station web sites for Univision, who last year
won the award’s highest honor, the 2002 @ de Oro; José
Levy, founder and President of Argentina’s MP Ediciones
Corporation; José Villa, founder and Executive Director
of Focus Multimedia of the United States; Janine Warner, strategic
Internet consultant, writer, speaker and founder of JC Warner
Communications; Mary Zerafa, Director of the Digital Opinion
firm; Rafael Ibarra, Director of Computer Sciences at UCA
and founding member and President of El Salvador’s SVNet;
Susannah Whitmore, Vice President of Sales at Cultural Access
Group; and Sandeep Sood, founder and President of India’s
DeepSun corporation.
