Smart tourism uses innovative technology to bolster or improve offerings for tourists. Whether this means offering brand-new experiences or improving accessibility, this can be transformative for the tourism sector. So, let’s take a look at some of the popular smart tourism trends, and the technology behind them.
Virtual Experiences
Put simply, virtual experiences aim to provide a traditionally in-person experience in an interactive way through the internet. This has long since been seen in the entertainment industry, particularly in the case of online casinos. For example, when players join the bingo community at Paddy Power they will be able to interact with like-minded bingo enthusiasts in live virtual bingo rooms such as Paddy’s Party, Diamond Room, and Cash Cubes. These games are hosted by a human bingo caller, and played in real time, providing an immersive and authentic bingo experience.
This same logic can be applied to tourism experiences. For instance, there may be places where increased footfall has to be weighed up with the conservation of the area, such as the North York Moors or Northumberland. In these cases, providing tourists with a virtual alternative can help boost local tourism without the need to physically travel to the area. These virtual experiences could include anything from virtual hikes to 360-degree tours of famous landmarks, allowing people to get an authentic understanding of the place despite not stepping foot on the same soil.
Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) could also be used in such experiences. Whilst VR creates a whole new virtual environment, augmented reality AR superimposes digital elements on the user’s real environment. With this in mind, VR could allow visitors to experience the place through sensory equipment and a headset. On the other hand, AR could show interactive digital elements, including historical avatars or informative descriptions.
Crowd Tracking
The footfall of the area can affect tourist’s experiences. It is their quiet peacefulness and tranquillity of places like Plumpton Rocks in Harrogate that attracts people to these places, so it is only logical that tourists might prefer to time their visit for when the attractions are less busy.
To address this need, the Lake District National Park provides live webcams of the views over many of the popular lakes and hiking trails. Not only does this allow people to take in the views, it allows tourists to see how busy the destinations are in real time. There are also more technical ways that crowds can be tracked – namely, using artificial intelligence (AI). AI can be used to gather accurate data of the numbers of people within a location at any given time, and report this on various platforms.
Whilst webcams can show you what is happening in real time, AI can use previous data and trends to predict when the best time to travel might be. It may be a while before this tech becomes mainstream in the UK, however it is being spearheaded in Europe by Denmark Copenhagen Airport using the AIRHART platform.
As you can see, smart tourism has the power to help tourist destinations strike the right balance between footfall and conservation, provide unique tourism experiences, and allow tourists to make informed decisions about the timings of their trip. All that’s left to do now is start exploring!
