Mementos and memorabilia |
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| A lot's happened since Informus was founded in 1995. This page provides new users and also those faithful ones who have been with us from the start with a short glimpse into the past. Ten years isn't normally any great age for a company, but within the Internet branch we're included amongst the veterans! |
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1995
"The history of Informus began in the summer of 1995, under the shade of a parasol on a balcony in Knivsta. Five friends decided to realize a business idea together. |
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| A hectic autumn followed while we worked on developing the service. Back then, the tools for making homepages weren't too sharp and we had to invent most things ourselves. |
| All of Sweden's tourist agencies were contacted to find out just what their district had to offer in the way of conferences and meetings. This was followed by a lot of late nights, busy registering all the facts we had gathered. |
1996
On the 1st April 1996 the first version of the service was released. Almost 1,000 establishments were represented, so even from the outset a lot of information was on offer. |
| Saxnäsgården in the far North was our very first customer. Lastberget was the first customer within the Stockholm area to discover us. Before the end of the year we had another 50 or so customers on board. |
| Our technological requirements were handled by our own webserver, located in our office deep in the forest outside Knivsta. Broadband was out of the question so we solved the problem with ISDN. A local internet operator in Uppsala called our web server via an ISDN modem whenever an outside source wanted to access our homepage. In those days the few seconds delay that this created went unnoticed - almost everyone surfed via a modem. |
1998
Two years later our number of customers had tripled. We had participated in exhibitions at both SHIE and the Scandinavian Travel Market. |
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| At the latter-named exhibition we shared our stand with another exhibitor. Maybe you remember www.punkt.se, the predecessor of Spray? They joined us on our stand to launch their new travel service, mrJet. |
| A new function saw the light of day, the booking enquiry. For the first time it was possible to reach a large number of meeting sites simultaneously. E-post was still in short supply so the enquiries were sent via fax. |
| The picture to the right is of a location presentation (Bomans in Trosa). The left-hand margin displays a list with the results of a search and in which the locations to be sent an enquiry can also be marked. |
| Not unlike today's procedure, is it? |
| The summer of 1998 brought our first broadband connection - an entire 512kb via Telenordia. What a boost! |
2000
In the year 2000 Informus underwent its first major facelift: the lilac colour was replaced with wine-red. A large map on the first page made it easy to select a desired area. |
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| The biggest news was being able to search for locations according to availablility. We called this KonferensAkuten (The Conference Crunch). |
| A search could be made based on availability within the immediately upcoming 3-4 weeks. This service was mostly appreciated in the large cities, where finding available locations at the last minute can be difficult. |
| An important milestone was also our contract with Konferenspoolen. We were entrusted with the task of supplying a search service with information about member locations to Konferenspoolen's homepage. |
| Our collaboration with "Poolen" continues even today and has been followed by many more: Amica, Sodexo, Sverigeresan and The Swedish Travel & Tourism Council, to name but a few. |
2002
Marketing efforts via exhibitions continued. At the SHIE-exhibition in January 2002, Informus had a large group stand. |
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| As well as sharing our stand with some 40 or more conference representatives we also hade a café and provided entertainment. Big success. |
| The homepage underwent a few changes. For example, the map was moved from the first page and room was made for "Tips of the Month" instead. |
| Contracts were made with the Best Western, Choice, Scandic, Kristna Gårdar and Hotell chains, not forgetting Orust Konferens. No matter how large or small, Informus ensures all its customers are clearly visible. |
| The number of customers passed 600. In total there was information on over 5,000 companies within the meetings branch. This strengthened Informus's position as the largest meetings point on the Internet |
2003
Seven years on, and it's time for the homepage to take on a whole new look: new logotype, new design and new functions. |
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| The other big event of the year is that we have been chosen by VisitSweden to be the supplier of meetings information for visitsweden.com - Sweden's official homepage for travel and tourism. We are delighted to have been entrusted with this important task. |
| We remember 2003 as the year we started working with the Lugna Favoriter (Easy Listening) radio station. For Father's Day, listeners could compete for a number of very nice weekend packages at some of Sweden's best hotels and conference locations. If you were lucky - or unlucky? - you might be contacted and interviewed on the radio. |
2004
This year brought something we'd all been waiting on - maps! It became quick and easy to see exactly where hotels and training centres were situated. |
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| We also kicked-off a new concept for coming in contact with all the booking professionals and locations around the country: we set off on a road show and managed to cover 17 different places during the spring and autumn of 2004. |
| From Malmö down south to Umeå up north we travelled around and held meetings to provide our colleagues with information along with a bit of light entertainment and good food. In November we had a grand finale at Foresta on Lidingö with almost 200 participants. Jonas Hallberg, our M.C., and Starboys from Karlstad rounded off the evening with a wonderful show. |
2005
We've had our new design for two years now and even made a few small adjustments here and there during this time. The new logo has had time to settle down and a great many colleagues now associate our three colourful squares with Informus. |
| In recent years we've put a lot of focus on collaboration. Our first presentation in 2005 is a collaboration with Roks (National organisation for women in need (on-call emergencies) in Sweden) and their inventory of "porn-free" hotels. This subject has been in the spotlight since many hotel and conference booking departments within national and local government have declared a policy to use "porn-free" hotels only. |
2006
Based on when the company was founded, 2005 is really the year of our 10th anniversary, but we usually think off our start as being April 1996 when we appeared on the internet for the first time. So this was the year we celebrated.
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| We're just starting out on the next ten years. |
| Join us!" |
Mikael Bengtson
Chairman of the Board |
