Berge & Meer HQ

Koblenz, 4. January 2006. The TUI subsidiary "Berge & Meer", market leader in Germany for direct holiday sales, is in February 2006 starting production of all its catalogs and ads with the publishing software produced by VIVA.

For the collation of catalog and product data, the content management and product planning system "VivaGate" will be used, while the production of catalogs and ads will be carried out using the VIVA Network Publishing technology. "Berge & Meer's catalogs and those of over 180 sales partners from all fields right across the board from small food shop chains to trade unions will be created automatically in high quality with effect from February 2006", reports Andreas Krings of VIVA. "For "Berge & Meer" this will mean an enormous savings potential."

The architecture of the Viva solution allows the sharing out of tasks world-wide.The holiday and product data records may be created and maintained from an unlimited number of workstations using a Web browser, while the documents are produced fully automatically on a central VIVA Publishing Server. Should further editing of a document still be necessary, the layout program "VivaDesigner" is available for making fine adjustments.

With the help of the new technology, "Berge & Meer", intends to reduce dramatically the amount of work involved in the production of around 8,000 catalog and ad pages annually. As well as the much reduced costs of production of the layouts, it was the huge advantages gained in keeping data up to date and maintaining quality that played a major part in the decision to go for network-supported automated production.

The TUI subsidiary "Berge & Meer" is in Germany the fourth tour operator, joining forms such as "Alltours", that in recent years has switched from using the traditional layout program "QuarkXPress" to the automated VIVA technology. With this move, VIVA is the market leader in automated catalog production in the tourist industry.