Tourist Information

Applications
Title	Tourist Information
Author(s)	Rui Barradas Pereira.
Level	Basic
Year of Publication	2011

Tourist Information applications provide guidance and landmark information to tourists typically in urban environments.

Some of the most usual tourist information services could be fitted in the Location based Information Streams but since tourist applications can have been one the most dynamic areas of LBS and increasingly sophisticated applications are being deployed it makes sense for tourism applications to be a separate category.

Tourism Information applications can range from providing the user with the nearest restaurant or landmark to be a full blown city guide with multimedia information and guided audio tours.

Application Architecture

Tourist Information Services depend normally on an architecture that includes a multimedia user mobile device and a multimedia database of tourist information for a city or a region. In tourist information applications the information is usually stored locally since the multimedia content is far more demanding in terms of bandwidth and normally the user cellular connection is in roaming.

The user mobile device is usually a PDA, smartphone or even a tablet computer with internet access, localization capabilities and a multimedia user interface can display high-resolution graphics.

The functionalities usually provided by these applications are:

• The user can browse information about the site and about the surrounding landmarks. The information can be provided as text, audio or images.
• The user can follow guided tours stored in the database. This functionality is a mix of pedestrian navigation and tourist guide where the user is guided through the streets and when in the proximity of a landmark text, audio and/or images provides information about the landmarks.
• Functionality similar to the nearest business or service discussed in the article on Location based Information Streams is normally provided.
• Pedestrian navigation to assist the user to go from one site to the other can be provided
• Some of these applications support advertising or sponsoring since some are free to the user being financed by local authorities and sponsors. Advertising will be delivered to the user when in certain locations or in certain stages of the guided-tours.
• In some cases weather and local transportation information is also provided by the application.

Variants to this architecture are:

• Online servers can be used instead of local databases.

GNSS guided tours

The most interesting aspect of the Tourist Information Applications is the guided tour functionality. The functionality can provide an enhanced touristic experience to the users by both guiding the user to most important and relevant sites and landmarks and at the same time providing context information about the sites. If audio is used to provide the information the time that the user spends going from one landmark to the other can be used to convey additional information instead of the user having to stop to read the information on a paper guide.

Some of these guides are even free to the user since they produced by local authorities eventually with the support of sponsors in exchange for advertising. Some of them use freely available information such as Wikipedia content as basis for landmark description.

In some cities tour operators took the concept one step ahead by renting buggies and segways that have a guided tour application integrated in the vehicle. The guided tour application navigate the users through the tour and provides landmark information during the tours.

Application Examples

Applications and services that fit in this category are:

• Audioguidia: Audioguides for your iPhone/iPod/iPad
• toozla: City and travel audio guides for your Bada (Samsung), Android, iPhone/iPod/iPad and J2ME
• Digi-Guide: The Digi-Guide is based on a GNSS-enabled mobile device that allows being guided and being given information on main Points of Interest of a city.
• GoCar Tours: GNSS Guided Tours in two-seated buggies.
• Red Tour: Lisbon GNSS Guided Tours in electric vehicles (two and four-seated buggies, segways and electric bikes).