Webpage Comps for Tourism Portal Redesign

Provide 3 design comps (homepage, "article" page, vendor listing page) for redesign of ad-revenue oriented tourism website.

Desired Color Scheme:
mountain/desert colors, deep blue sky, forest green, sage green, browns, greys

Desired Style:
The design must be able to accomodate a lot of information, and let the information stand out on it's own. In other words, don't overdesign it, focus on ease of use, clean look, good typography.

Accepted File Formats:
photoshop .psd or fireworks .png

We are seeking 3 design comps, a homepage, an interior "article" page, and an interior "vendor listing" page, for a soon-to-be updated tourism portal website for a town / region in Colorado. The area has popular summer and winter tourism with skiing, whitewater rafting, archeology and historic attractions, etc... Please contact us directly for the address of the current site.

This site serves three purposes:

1. Provides information to visitors interested in visiting or relocating to the area. In addition, provides a venue for those visitors to rate vendors and write reviews/trip reports.

2. Provides area vendors (ie hotels, realtors, rafting companies) a place to advertise.

3. Generates revenue via paid advertising (banner ads and directory listings for businesses) and Google Adsense.

The new site is to going to be content-driven and interactive. The main content areas of the site are to include:

1. Home page with sections for recent updates, upcoming events (a feed from an external site), advertisements, other external feeds (like a ski report or river report)

2. "Article" pages (ie Suggested Itineraries). Article pages will have text, photos, and inline google ads

3. Vendor directory. For example, a page with a listing of Downtown hotels. Each listing would have similar information, such as name, address, web link, email link, popularity (ie 1-5 stars), link to reviews, and an optional photo

4. Trip reports section - user contributed content - stories, photos. Ads may be included inline.

5. Multimedia section - photo galleries, webcams, etc..

6. Information Request Form/Contact

The above are general descriptions of content. Specific, global navigation links should include:

Home
About "region name"
Lodging
Real Estate
Dining
Things to Do
Trip Reports
Galleries
Request More Info

There should be room on all pages to accomodate advertisements in the layout

Some additional design notes - similar sites that I can comment on:

1. http://funside.com/about

Click through this site. It is a classy design, clean layout of content, attention to detail (example, the list item bullets). While the content/theme/colors is different than what we need (we are in the Wild West), it's a great example of a very sharp tourism site. Even their "info boxes" in the sidebars of the site are very detailed and nicely done.

2. http://www.moabutah.com/

I like this because it's different from most other tourism sites - the design is original, the colors are great and they match the colors of the region. The content and organization is not anything special, but the design stands out.

3. http://www.gunnisoncrestedbutte.com/

I love the colors and the rustic style. I'm not a fan of drop down menus - I prefer the menus on funside.com instead. The site also feels crowded and busy.

Overall, I want to emphasize that I like clean design - let the information speak for itself, focus on good typography, white space, and design is so good it just blends into the background :)