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The race of cities to be recognised as a major tourist destination can reveal some success stories, several examples of the perils of commoditisation and a bunch of sad accounts of wrong programmes regarding city branding/place making policies putting some cities in risk of dying of starvation.
Pablo Sánchez Chillón, Innovative Urban Planner and Founder of EOLEXCITYLAB published a selection of travel and tourism applications developed by cities around the world. The applications use technologies such as Near Field Communication (NFC), QR Codes and Augmented Reality (AR).
According to Pablo Sánchez
New services, apps or urban products regarding safety, ecology, mobility, connectivity, retail or cultural issues associated with the Smart City deployment are growing in importance regarding the consolidation or re-creation of the image and identity of destinations perceived by visitors. If some years ago Japan was the Mecca for techie geeks, today, cities as Vancouver, Amsterdam or Barcelona are tasting the sweet flavor of increasing ROI related to the Smart and Green vision of the city packaging new tourism products that are experiential in nature. It is not coincidence that the 3 of them are focusing on the collaborative nature of the tourist experience, making visitors actively engaged in the process of creating and attaching meaning to the tourism destination’ s image. Alive and sharing!