Straker » Portfolio » SKYCITY Entertainment Group

SKYCITY Entertainment Group

SKYCITY Entertainment Group (SKYCITY) is currently one of the most prominent entertainment businesses operating in Australasia. From December 1996, when the company opened its first casino in Auckland, SKYCITY has evolved from a singe-site Auckland-based operation into a multinational, multi-site entertainment business. Its facilities comprise boutique to large-scale casinos, numerous specialty bars and restaurants including Auckland''''s Orbit revolving restaurant, convention centres and live entertainment venues.

At a Glance

URL - www.skycity.co.nz
URL - www.skycityadelaide.com.au
URL - www.skycityauckland.co.nz
URL - www.skycitydarwin.com.au
URL - www.skycityhamilton.co.nz
URL - www.skycityqueenstown.co.nz
URL - www.skycityleisure.co.nz

Business Challenges
Easily create and manage multiple sites (business units) with consistent branding.

Solution
Shado CMS Enterprise Edition.

Business Benefits
Reduced operational costs through ease of maintaining branding consistency and low cost of deploying new sites.

Facts and Figures
Staff - 5,000 +
Contributes nearly NZ$1 billion to the New Zealand Gross Domestic Product and A$6.5 billion to the Australian Gross Domestic Product.

About

During the course of SKYCITY's expansion two Australian Casinos have been rebranded into the SKYCITY family, SKYCITY Darwin and SKYCITY Adelaide. In New Zealand a Queenstown operation comprising a boutique casino restaurant/bar was opened in December 2000. SKYCITY Hamilton was rebranded and the company's shareholding increased to 70%. Additionally a 40.5% interest was purchased in the Christchurch Casino and a 316 room hotel project completed adjacent to the Auckland casino site.

Challenge

SKYCITY sought a Content Management System that it could easily transfer its various corporate sites across to. Also of importance was the ability to distribute editing permissions out to various departments and the maintenance of consistent branding across a number of business units (websites) such as their Auckland, Queenstown, Hamilton and Adelaide Casinos.

Solution

Shado CMS Enterprise Edition.

Results

Six individual sites were created for the following business units using Shado CMS. Each is unique, however they share the same umbrella "SKYCITY" branding.

  • SKYCITY Convention Centre
  • SKYCITY Adelaide
  • SKYCITY Auckland
  • SKYCITY Hamilton
  • SKYCITY Queenstown
  • SKYCITY Entertainment Group

All six sites can be seamlessly accessed from the SKYCITY hub page at www.skycity.co.nz.

SKYCITY Convention Centre. The challenge for the new Convention Centre was to provide an effective and informative site that would encourage companies to book the venue without physically viewing the premises. This presented an opportunity to introduce a rich internet room configurator to the site. Application of the Shado CMS Object Framework provided SKYCITY with the ability to manage the name, description and number of people a room could accommodate, and to present this information in five different layouts. By utilizing both Shado CMS and Flash the room configurator enables users to tour the facilities as well as access all relevant information regarding services offered by the Convention Centre.

SKYCITY Adelaide. The existing SKYCITY Adelaide website was an out of date static site that general staff could not update. The new site utilizes mostly standard Shado CMS functionality but also includes the use of Shado CMS Objects to manage events and other promotional elements. Non-technical staff are now capable of easily updating site content themselves.

SKYCITY Auckland / SKYCITY Entertainment Group. The SKYCITY Auckland site employs the same umbrella branding as the other SKYCITY websites. It includes Shado CMS and the extensive use of Shado CMS Objects to control events calendars, promotions, media releases, restaurant bookings and online competitions. A number of properties are employed to enrich the user experience including Flash-based interactive features and panoramic views of the hotel rooms and Auckland city.

The SKYCITY sites demonstrate Shado's ability to implement complex design features, such as applying attributes to images to adjust how they are cropped to fit the user's browser window. They also demonstrate a key advantage when using Shado CMS to develop multiple websites:- branding continuity. This continuity allowed SKYCITY to quickly and easily develop the sites from scratch by deploying existing design templates and Shado CMS

Objects, and simply making changes to images and the Style Sheet.