Based on factual-based survey, up to 76% of modern travellers consider their smartphone as the most important travel companion! Therefore, the trend of traveling is changing, more people are using technologies and are looking to discover new adventures. It taught people to travel independently, not with big organized groups, even elderly people now know how to use smart phones. But tourists look for advanced and sustainable solutions. Tourists prefer to have all the information in one spot, not to download too many applications.
The project is structured in 7 work packages: (WPs):
1. Content digitization for creating up to 5 bikes tours and 5 walking tours out of the beaten tracks in Rome;
2. Translation of all content into Italian and German;
3. Audio narratives using TTS with phonemes and manual optimizations;
4. Prime Maintenance for 12 months;
5. Quarterly Big Data analysis dashboard + heatmaps to show the behaviour of users;
6. Marketing and promotion including web widget showing the tours on the website of the partners, designing online and offline collaterals, social posts
7. Project Management.
KO1. To contribute to a more equitable distribution of tourists in Rome, thanks to innovative tours concept (walking and biking) by combining the best of guided walking and biking, e-biking and vespa tours in Rome. Walking and biking modalities will contribute to deconcentrate tourism flows in CO2 producers’ vehicles such as taxi, buses and cars;
KO2. To steer touristic flow to less and off-the-beaten tracks places in Rome and “monitor” the visitors flow by comparing heatmaps before and after publishing the new content on Audio Guide. This is rather relevant for a city like Rome, to be “flooded” by more than 20M people in 2025 for the Jubilee and holy year;
KO3. To promote local providers, restaurants, coffee shops, local brands which usually cannot afford to spend much for the advertising, therefore the project can drive traffic to them, supported by the analysis provided. In 2025, due to the Jubilee tourism flow will be concentrated around the 4 main basilicas and related commercial activities. This project wants to focus on the neighbourhoods rather than in the most prestigious monuments which are suffering of over-tourism.
1. SmartGuide (SG) digital provider fulfils project expectation with one solution for digitizing and publishing the guides on the platform for independent travellers. Quality guiding is not only showing the historical monuments, but sharing much of local life, taste of traditional food, wine, and buying from local manufactures, not imported souvenir stuff;
2. Tourists without a local SIM card can download the full guide also for offline use conveniently on their hotel Wi-Fi;
3. Classical walking and bike Apps lack the ability to indicate the routes which cyclists/tourists must follow, and to benefit of comprehensive, and quality (see WP3), audio tracks capable of enhancing their knowledge of the surrounding Points of Interest. SG technology offers these solutions to share the local point of view and allow tourists to truly capture the Genius Loci of the visited places.
Benefits for Rome
1.Tourism Deconcentration. Rome is crowded most of the year. Prospective travellers don't have the courage to step out the main routes and discover other parts of the city. The 2025 “Holy year” (20M tourists) is a unique occasion to match this opportunity. After visiting traditional sites, it is important to show “another city” based on each visitor's personal preferences. Let them explore, with the safety and freedom to wander around, activities and sites they would not find by themselves;
Benefits for the travellers
2.Listen personal stories rather than verbose description. Migrating existing consolidated routes and tours to SG platform allow to enhance the effectiveness and better exploit the potential of self-guided tours, as the travellers will not simply follow a route and subsequently listen to verbose and often conceited descriptions of city highlights. The proposed technology allows to master our own content and make the difference with our competitors;
3. Affordable prices. Paid audio guides cost less than traditional guides, this way every traveller can afford to learn about the city even with a small budget;
4.Inclusive tours. Self-guided tours are more inclusive, since allow tourists to explore the city whenever it suits them and at their own pace. Families with small children, people with limited accessibility who need more time to move around may find it difficult to keep up with a traditional tour and they would prefer Audio Guide.