MOBILE CITY guides are not new but Dublin Tourism is claiming a first with Visit Dublin, an augmented reality application that allows users to retrieve content on 1,400 points of interest in the greater Dublin area.
Available for iPhone and Android phones at €2.99, it enables users to retrieve information on a building or object that they point at with their smartphone. Versions for other app stores are in the pipeline.
Irish start-up GeoGuides developed the application using a mobile platform that it licenses from GeoVector in the US, but it was Dublin Tourism’s vast database of digital content that made it possible to turn around a project that was only started in March.
About 7,000 web pages and pieces of multimedia content, including video and podcasts, were made available for the application. “We are the leading city in the world in our use of web technology so when GeoGuides came to us we volunteered to be a guinea pig,” said Frank Magee, Dublin Tourism’s chief executive.
Because the application is dependent on co-ordinates, many of the 1,400 sites were revisited by Dublin Tourism staff and double-checked.
With accuracy assured, tourists can now wander around the city identifying places of interest within a 10km radius of where they are, using the directional search technology.
The smartphone’s position and direction are used to create a virtual arrow that intersects with objects in the Dublin Tourism database. Software identifies the object and the user is presented with a list of content options, from basic text on opening times to overlaid images and audio.
About 30 locations are already using the application to offer discount coupons to attract visitors, an e-commerce strand that Dublin Tourism is looking to develop further.
The digital data is downloaded as a 20MB file onto the smartphone and is cached in the memory. The only reason to connect to a mobile network is if the user wants daily bulletins that are also part of the service. Content is refreshed on a monthly basis.
Dublin Tourism is targeting 100,000 app downloads in the first year in a project that is part of a €10 million digital strategy to promote Dublin as a tourist destination and attract an additional one million visitors by 2015.
For GeoGuides, it is a significant step forward for a company that only started last year. It receives a third of the revenue, equally split between Dublin Tourism and the app store, but its real value is showcasing the GeoVector technology.
“We have a world exclusive except for Japan, and the US military also have a licence,” said Paul Hennessy, co-founder of GeoGuides. “It could be used in any city and we’re already seeing a lot of interest.”
A version of the application is about to be launched in South Africa and there are market opportunities for the technology outside of tourism. Real estate is a good fit, according to Mr Hennessy.
“You could take virtual tours of houses for sale as well as the neighbourhood and local amenities,” he added.
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