the near future of tourism services based on digital traces

the near future of tourism services
based on digital traces

nicolas nova
21.10.2010 | Swiss e-Tourism Forum

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Hello, my name is Nicolas Nova. I am a researcher at Liftlab, a research agency
based in Geneva. In this talk today, I will show you how digital traces produced
by digital devices (mobile telephone, cameraphones, location-based services,
etc.) can be seen as an opportunity to design innovative services for tourism


For the record, I wrote two books about location-based services, mobile applications and the
issues at stake when designing them.

3D graphics


Historically, in the last few years, we’ve seen lots of innovation, which may have an inﬂuence
on tourism/touristic services. 3d rendering played for instance an important role to allow
people to prepare their visits.

Location-based services
Location-based services such as Loopt (https://app.loopt.com but there are plenty of others) also received lots of attention. At
the most basic level, they allow to improve navigation (think about car GPS devices) but mobile application also enable people to
get information about where there friends/contacts are located, where to ﬁnd speciﬁc shops and services, etc.

Augmented Reality

Obviously Augmented reality is the new grail for lots of people. See for example Layar
(http://layar.com/), an innovative Augmented Reality application that acts as a local search
engine which displays the results as a visual overlay on top of reality.

Augmented Reality

Metro Paris Subway (http://www.metroparisiphone.com), an augmented reality application that it shows bus
and subway routes, locates nearby travel stations, and highlights points of interest along the way, such as
restaurants and hotels.

driving force:
“data is the new intel
inside” (Tim oʼreilly)

All these projects are interesting, it’s been 15-20 years research labs are working on prototypes along these vectors. They do
have plus and minuses but the problem I see is that they’re based on a limited focus. Indeed, they are mostly input/output
interfaces. Another way to look into things would be to start from the DATA and adopt a bottom-up approach about what do
with them. Let’s have a look at the kind of data that could be employed.

Social practice:
“personal informatics”

Personal informatics like the Nike+iPod Sports Kit: device which measures and records the
distance and walk pace on your iPod/iPod Touch/iPhone 3GS. It allows you to view the walk
or run history.

Social practice:

Personal informatics is not only for people with iPhone but kids also use it with Nintendo DS.
See for example Walk with Me by Nintendo, a little keyfob electronic pedometer to track up
your walkabouts and uploads them in the console to see your walking routines.

Social practice:

It’s not only physical movements... also software usage, music on itunes, books checked on
Amazon could be tracked and employed

Social practice:
user-generated content

The picture one put on the Web too

Social practice:
user-generated content


Your upcoming travels can also be shared through platforms such as Dopplr or WAYN

Technological change:
sensors


Data can additionally come from sensors

Technological change:
sensors


And your (smart)phone is of course a sensor

Policies: open GIS, open data


Finally, policies are changing now and more and more public data are shared (open GIS, open
data initiative). This is also an important material.

Public data Urban sensors

Flickr pictures
Spatial coordinates
Phone (GPS/
Movements
cell-id, camera,
...
mp3, web
browsing...)


So end up with plenty of data sources: public database (sensor, weather, pollution), personal
objects that report about their status, “traces” generated by people activity (intentional
traces: photo on ﬂickr, background information: the music people listen to on itunes, the
books checked on Amazon...)

some examples


Real Time Rome
(Sensable City Lab)

Real-time Rome aggregated data from cell phones to better understand urban dynamics in real time. By revealing the pulse of
the city, the project aims to show how technology can help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment.
In the visualizations of Real Time Rome we synthesize data from various real-time networks to understand patterns of daily life
and special events in Rome. MIT SENSEable City Lab, Real-Time Rome: http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/

Vélib, fête de la musique 2008, made by Fabien Girardin out of data from the paris bike rental system

Barcelona on Flickr
(Fabien Girardin)
Visualisation of pictures taken by people, geotagged, and uploaded on Flickr... and mapped onto the city:
http://www.girardin.org/fabien/tracing/

Visualisation of pictures taken by people, geotagged, and uploaded on Flickr... and mapped onto the country:
http://senseable.mit.edu/worldseyes/

Visualisation of pictures taken by people, geotagged, and uploaded on Flickr... and mapped onto the country: Switzerland. The
visualizations of Flickr pictures allows evaluating the potential of using people-generated geotagged information to contribute
urban understanding.

what’s the point?


This is all nice and sexy but what’s the point? how is this pertinent for the tourism industry?

1. Reveal the invisible
+ improve statistics
The ﬁrst goal is certainly representational: as every map, it could be pertinent to make visible and explicit phenomena that are
invisible. The analysis reveals new elements, either hidden in databases or new data-source

2. Make people participate

In addition, it can enable to engage people differently in their environment (WikiCity, MIT Sensable City lab:http://
senseable.mit.edu/wikicity/rome/): by showing them these new phenomena some researchers hypothesize that city inhabitants
may be inﬂuenced. The question they would like to explore are the following: 'How do people react towards this new perspective
upon their own city while they are determining the city's very own dynamic?' and 'How does having access to real time data in the
context of possible action alter the process of decision making in how to go about different activities?'

3. Evaluate urban strategy
(Sensable City Lab)
These maps can also be useful to evaluate urban strategies. The MIT Sensable City Lab worked on the evaluation of the Waterfall
project in NYC

(Sensable City Lab)
The project allowed to characterize visitor’s dynamic based on picture shared by people on Flickr (explicitly disclosed) and
records of mobile phone network usage (implicitly-generated) to map the spatial distribution
of locals and visitors to evaluate
the impact of the New York City Waterfalls on the attractiveness of the
waterfront. This new sort of data enable to develop

attractiveness indicators to evaluate strategies

(Sensable City Lab)

4. Improve the infrastructure?
Image courtesy of Sense Networks
Fabien Girardin’s work about Bicing in Barcelona + other people are working on these datasets too: Aleix Ruiz de Villa has
developed an algorithm to improve the distribution of the bikes http://www.lavanguardia.es/ciudadanos/noticias/
20090314/53659920153/un-joven-barcelones-idea-un-algoritmo-para-mejorar-el-bicing.html

4. Improve the infrastructure?
Fabien Girardin’s work + other people are working on these datasets too: Aleix Ruiz de Villa has developed an algorithm to
improve the distribution of the bikes http://www.lavanguardia.es/ciudadanos/noticias/20090314/53659920153/un-joven-
barcelones-idea-un-algoritmo-para-mejorar-el-bicing.html

Citysense shows you how active
locations are right now and which
ones are abnormally active. It sees
cities “from above and puts the
top live hotspots in your hand” by
crunching vast amounts of data
emanating from thousands of cell-
phones, GPS-equipped cabs and
other data devices to paint live
pictures of where people are
gathering.

5. New forms of (real-time)
services
Beyond these usages, the data can also be employed to create new forms of real-time services such as Citysense (http://
www.citysense.com)

5. Allow people to make
informed decisions
EveryBlock (http://www.everyblock.com) ﬁlters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s
happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city.

6. Dynamic signage
Dash is a service that combines traditional GPS navigation to the collection of contextualized, aggregated and geolocalized
traces of other users. It therefore approaches traffic in an original way – by collecting it from other people driving real commute
routes, during real commute times. Each Dash Express anonymously and automatically sends its position and speed back to
servers at the Dash Network Operations Center. The Dash servers then update all other Dash devices in the area with current
road speeds. That way, members of the Dash Driver Network always have the best, most up-to-date traffic information available.

problems?

What are the issues at stake

privacy


Privacy is a sensitive issue (quite logical) Who owns the data? Who takes care of the data?

infrastructure problems


technological ﬂaws


uncertainty, accuracy troubles


conclusion
• Hybridization of the digital and the physical
• Records of people interactions (intentional or implicit)
enable to quantify our behaviors and create new
indicators

• These traces lead to lots of opportunities: detailed
analysis of touristsʼ experience (marketing+evaluation
tool) + create tourist activity/infrastructures accordingly
+ design real-time information applications for tourists

• Both for tourists AND services providers + public
bodies


merci
nicolas@liftlab.com

the near future of tourism services based on digital traces

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