We think, it is really important…
During our research we have found out that nowadays tourists during their trip are surrounded with loads of tourism information from brochures, travel guides, internet, social media, OTAs, DMOs and many more. Those travellers who do not plan their trip till the smallest detail, probably end up at a destination without a clue where to find exactly the information that this traveller needs. In addition, in urban destinations, where public transportation plays a crucial role in tourists experience, it is important to facilitate the right environment for the tourist to find the right information how to get from point A to point B.
Personalized travel Guide in Austria- Guide Me
Step by step, first ideas were born. Narrowing down wide range of possible areas and touchpoints that we could work on, brought us to the field of technology in tourism which enhances and improves experiences of travellers during their on site travel in Austria.
Why just not search things on Google?
-because Guide Me will guide You!
Guide Me is a tool that allows tourists to optimize their time while travelling and find the right and necessary information at the right moment and at a current place in a destination. Recent research (Moritz, 2015) that aimed at getting a deeper understanding of the current situation of the on-site travel experiences in Austria, suggested a customer demand for and mobile application with following elements: travel guide for points of interest and tourism attractions, public transport navigations, taxi services, booking of tickets, offline maps, social media. Moreover, research concluded that more than 71% of participants would want to have these features in one single app, that supports the initial idea of Guide Me. Guide me consists of all these features.
How Guide Me will guide You?
To be honest, it is not that easy…
Our initial task was to find out biggest traveller pains and identify problems that travellers encounter during their travel experience on site. After several rounds of interviews with travellers in a tourist dense areas, we gathered a pool of different ideas where we filtered those which were the most relevant for our traveler. The idea to create an app was based on the aim to create the ideal solution for travellers pocket during travel.
After developing the prototype, we tested our minimum viable product with travellers and one really competent industry practitioner that gave us many insights and opportunities to improve Guide Me´s initial features, maine elements and made it more user-friendly.
Guide Me offers real time travel information during the journey where travelers would be able to adjust their travel based on their preferences, hobbies, things they enjoy while travelling, budget and most importantly past travel patterns.
Real time information updates, transportation, restaurants, accommodation, attractions and social interactions… Guide Me is a tool that would help tourists to orient into the huge amount of tourism information available and help them to make the best and personalized travel plan as possible.
Our biggest challenge is to develop the information platform where we can aggregate all the data. As Guide Me uses GPS locations and travel routing, we need cartographic data or and sources of mapping as a basis of Guide Me. Afterwards, we need to aggregate the data that is available online about attractions, transport and restaurants and label each element with labels that categorize them based on traveller preference filters.
Why Guide Me would be better as Google? – because Guide Me will know the traveller…
In addition, our features include last touch from a local, meaning that information provided is authentic. Our success is based on how good connections we make with our stakeholders and how well be can create for both the tourist and also the Austrian tourism industry.
The Future of Guide Me…
From business side, Guide Me can be considered as the innovation in the app sector focusing on Austrian tourism market which is currently in expansion. Since tourists are searching for unified and obtained data into one place, Guide Me can be attractive solution for both sides, tourists and stakeholders which can recognize the quality and all the benefits that this app provides. According to the fact that nowadays applications are globally used and preferred during the journeys which many studies confirmed this one offers the most wanted solutions for travellers in one place. Moreover, Guide Me has the potential for future expansion in the global market.
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Are we aiming too high?
As our main idea was to create a more personalized, better version of the existing travel applications, we need to provide all real time information needed during travellers journey. Our biggest competitor is Google and even though it is hart to compete with it and with several bigger players in the market, with the necessary support in order to create the right infrastructure and to develop high quality content, Guide Me would be recognized by the customers. Pulling the required data to provide this kind of service on a competing level is hard but not impossible to achieve. In general, such ideas are hard to realize for start ups as all the big competitors are on a large mass-market level, which are able to provide and process data on a much higher scale.
Personalization will continue to increase rapidly in importance in the upcoming years. Therefore, one can be confident that similar solutions will be on the market in near future. However Google, Lonely Planet, etc. are working constantly on the improvement of their services to achieve a higher level of personalization through artificial intelligence and other forms of new technologies. This means that the chances of entering this market successfully, which is dominated by giants is barely realistic.