Tourism Promotion

Municipalities play an important role in promoting tourism and supporting services in the tourism sector of the local economy. Municipalities have long promoted themselves as destinations, and in doing so supported local businesses and the jobs they provide. Municipalities jointly promote unconnected businesses that are unlikely on their own to join forces, but as a collective promote the area in a way that benefits all. Data and information technology tools bring new approaches for promoting area tourism to communities.

Applications and Solutions

Digital Maps and Tourism Information

Digital maps and tourism information that utilize smart city tools can allow tourists to access relevant, interactive and contextual experiences related to their location. Convenient and accessible technologies enabling an enriched tourist experience can lead to a competitive tourist destination and provide valuable geolocation data for municipalities. This data includes where people are going and coming from, crowd size, and key activities. Municipalities can use this data to assist sustainable city planning, improve public services including accessibility and transport, manage tourism flows, and support local businesses and attractions.

Technologies

In person and hardcopy tour guides – Traditional paper maps and pamphlets available at information centers and other major tourist attraction hubs.

Interactive digital map apps – Mobile apps using GPS to provide local information and context to users and can be used offline by downloading the content beforehand. These apps can be designed to use the phone’s GPS and run in the background of the device. They can also incorporate the below mentioned technologies to provide additional features and become increasingly interactive.

Smart beacon technology – Beacons (wireless Bluetooth transmitters) send signals to smartphones within its proximity and can be designed to allow tourists to discover different experiences, including nearby deals and offers, transportation schedules, weather updates, public service announcements, and more.

Emotion recognition software – Facial detection software detects certain emotions through cross-culturally and universally communicated facial expressions to make suggestions for helpful actions and resources.

Interactive augmented reality (AR) – AR allows users to point their device in a direction and see additional 3D objects and information on their screen. The visual objects and cues can act as a tour guide by educating the user about landmarks, navigating them towards attractions, and provide instant translation.

Chatbot guides – Interactive bots that provide information about city services, directions, suggestions for accommodations and local experiences.

Managing Liability Issues

The presence of children in public parks and recreational spaces make the liability issues in these areas especially fraught, particularly with respect to privacy and security.

Privacy

Issues.

⚠️ Digital maps and tourism apps will encounter privacy issues where they collect personal information of an identifiable individual. Smart tourism technologies will raise privacy issues where they record identifiable features including their ethnicity, country of origin, gender, and routes or itineraries traceable to individuals. Additional privacy considerations also arise where the technologies have more interactive features.

Managing Issues.

✅ Count, don’t track. Record numbers and direction instead of tracing routes that can be associated with individuals. Numerical data about frequently visited locations and frequently asked questions will not necessarily track identities.

✅ Inform users of privacy issues related to interactive features. A disclaimer can be provided to users about privacy implications when engaging with interactive chatbot or forum features.

✅ Obtain consent. Some technologies such as emotion recognition software and chatbot will likely collect more sensitive and identifiable information. These software tools should obtain consent at the beginning of its use and indicate the purpose of data collection, use and retention of data.

✅ Choose the technology appropriate to the task. Lower tech solutions such as beacon technology may be able to provide the promotional data to the user without the privacy issues that a facial emotion recognition software introduces.

✅ Data-fuzzing. Employ data-fuzzing techniques to preserve privacy. For example, do not include start and end points in route data so that a particular route cannot be traced to an individual. Similarly, fuzzing data of sensitive areas provides an additional layer of security for personal information.

✅ De-identify as soon as possible. If personal information absolutely must be collected, it should be stripped away as soon as possible.

✅ Limit data collection to only that which is needed. Serious consideration and justification should be made for the collection of sensitive personal information.

✅ Ensure that partners or contractors follow collection restrictions. When purchasing data from private companies, ensure that they are upholding their own privacy obligations under relevant legislation.

✅ Follow good privacy practices.

Security Issues

Issues.

⚠️ Privacy issues inherent to smart tourism technologies will include security issues, as data that does not initially identify individuals can do so in combination with other data. The software programs and hardware components will require security measures to prevent unauthorized access to the data.

Managing Issues.

✅ Many of the same solutions to privacy issues will address security issues: e.g., de-identify at source if possible, or as soon as possible if otherwise. Where personal information is collected, it should be held in a secure location.

✅ Physical, organization and technological measures to limit access to data should be in place to only allow access to those who need to handle the information.

✅ all partners or contractors should have adequate safeguards depending on the sensitivity of the information in their control.

✅ Follow good security practices.

Intellectual Property Issues

Issues.

⚠️ Intellectual property (IP) issues may where liability arises from the use of an app was authored by independent app developers that the municipality procured. Issues may also arise regarding the ownership of the data that is collected through the technologies where the municipality collaborates with a private entity.

Managing Issues.

✅ Licensing agreements. Municipalities will negotiate contractual licensing of software or other patented technology at the outset. These agreements can also address technological protection measures (TPMs) which is software that rejects modifications of the licensed product by unapproved third-party.

✅ Contractual allocation of liability. The allocation of liability arising from the app should be negotiated between the municipality and private entity and assigned to either party.

Procurement Issues

Issues.

⚠️ Digital maps and tourism information apps will involve the procurement of software developers from third parties. Similar to the IP issues, potential procurement issues involve the ownership of data collected through the procured solution. There will also be issues concerning the long-term costs of the technology, depending on the complexity and number of solutions required for the apps.

Managing Issues.

✅ The same solutions to IP will address procurement issues: e.g., negotiating licensing agreements and contractual agreements at the outset.

✅ Negotiation of the ownership of data and other data entitlements as part of the conditions of procurement and contract.

✅ Deciding on high-tech and low-tech solutions will depend on several factors: (a) What is the use case? Long-term planning, or baseline measurement of activity within the city, may not require the speed, accuracy, and scalability that “smarter” technologies offer. However, enhancing the user experience with real-time information and features may benefit from these features. (b) Technologies that rely on other hardware devices such as sensors may increase initial costs, as well as maintenance costs associated with TPMs. (c) Cost: low-tech solutions tend to be cheaper to acquire and maintain.

✅ Follow sound procurement practices.