Tourism chief defends $1 million website

PANAMA TOURISM Authority (ATP) administrator, Salomon Shamah, made a voluntary appearance before the National Assembly on Monday, August 19 to justify a $1 million a year web site contract.

"This is not just a website, this is the promotion of the whole country in the world," said. Shamah, in the first 20 minutes of his speech, sayin that while the remodeled web site received 2.5 million visitors a year.

"One thing is to design a page and the other is the content," the official said while indicating that for the country to compete in the international market it must maintain content in multiple languages."
He said , adding that 65% of tourism business in the world is done through the Internet, so that the page "is a living creature that transforms per second … this is not a page that has content left for seven days … ".
To generate content on the page and to keep it current form is required at least 18 people.
Shamah went to the Assembly following the publication of an investigation by La Prensa.