What with England's finest Norman keep; its second oldest Cathedral; Amherst Fort; the World Naval Base at Chatham; the Charles Dickens Centre; the Royal Engineers Museum; and river trips on the Kingswear Castle paddle steamer, the visitor centre attracts more than 300,000 visitors per year.

The Medway team uses CTV's destination management systems for all the Centre's marketing: accommodation bookings, brochure fulfilment, road and rail planning and National Express bookings.
Two of the workstations use EPOS to handle all stock control and over-the-counter sales.

And although the original computer network installed by CTV when the Medway Visitor Centre was opened was the most up-to-date at the time, Centre manager Ashley Davis and his team were finding it too slow - by today's standards - to handle the huge amounts of data input by the staff over the years, and in the TRIPS database updates supplied by CTV.

Normally, when TIC users find that their PCs can't keep up with the demands of the job, the only alternative has been to replace the whole system - a very costly exercise.

However, Chris Sims of CTV had a much more economical proposal up his sleeve: just exchange the existing file server for a Windows NT Terminal Server*, stand back and watch it run.

In this way, none of the existing computers had to be replaced; the resultant network has delighted Ashley Davis. He said: "We're so pleased with the upgrade: we now have Pentium performance on our existing PCs."

"We saved at least two-thirds of the cost of replacing our computers and systems, and we have ended up with a state-of-the-art system which will see us well into the new century."

"I would recommend this sort of approach to anyone!

The finishing touch for Medway was fitting a scanner, which adds a multi-media dimension to the TIM destination management system. Pictures or maps can be scanned in to the programme to create their very own personalised displays on the PAT, keeping all the public information right up-to-date.

Joanne Morrist, one of the Medway team, agrees: she said "TIM4 is a very easy package to use - our staff didn't need much training to learn exactly how to operate it - and since the upgrade it has been faster and better."

"It's easy to understand - easy to use - gives great results, and makes things better for our customers.

"What more could we ask?"

* The essence of the new Windows NT Terminal Server (TS) operating platform is that all the programmes and data processing are handled by the server. SO when a conventional network begins to shows its age, the normal practice is to replace the whole system. However, if you move to a TS Terminal Server platform, you will only need to replace the server.
The obvious advantage is one of cost . . . but the main improvement is in the network's performance. In our experience, installing TS increases the performance of your system by up to ten times over a conventional network.