Tourism Tech: Can These Apps Help You Explore Your City?

Are we on the cusp of the app economy, especially when it comes to tourism? With crowded travel reviews, live views on Google Maps, social media feeds, and influencers traveling into the sunset from faraway places, do they make fiscal sense anymore (to build, maintain, or buy)?

After not seeing much of my adopted city of Los Angeles during Covid, I wanted to re-explore it with fresh eyes. A lot has changed in the last few years; Many businesses have closed or turned to reduced workforces. But the tourists flocked to Southern California. How are you getting around town today? To find out, I downloaded a few LA visitor apps and grabbed my Tap mass transit travel card. Here’s what happened.

GPSMyCity

(Credit: SC Stewart)

Standing in Beverly Hills in front of the famous City Hall, I hopped onto the free city Wi-Fi and downloaded the GPSMyCity app.(Opens in a new window) From Google Play, it allows the application to use the exact location of the GPS when working. I waited for it to triangulate the satellite-based mapping data 12,500 miles above my head, then point out where to go. But he didn’t, he was seriously missing a trick.

In the app menu, I saw several articles, including California Dreamin’—Things to Do in LA, The Ultimate Guide to Koreatown, and The Hidden Staircases of Silver Lake. But I was at least 6-8 miles away from these destinations. I typed “Beverly Hills” into the search function and found a full page ad for a solid internet connection on the site. I clicked X to close the ad and looked at the general descriptions of the city – paragraphs you’d find in any short-form guide.

Scrolling down, I see “Boris Karloff’s former home”, click the red GO THERE rectangle and it says “The requested function is only available in the full version.” A 3-day free trial is offered to drive the app. I shrugged, not impressed.

On a nearby stump I saw Beverly Hills Then and Now with a QR code. I scanned it and watched a 2 minute video.(Opens in a new window) A story about my stand from the Beverly Hills Historical Society. This was more. But I couldn’t see a map that would lead me from one QR code to the next, in a magical, mystical style tour. I gave up and went home.

Google Maps and R

(Credit: Google)

I wondered if apps weren’t cutting it now. Without an in-house writing team it is difficult to keep the content fresh and accurate and there is no business model behind it That’s what he said. $78.51 billion went to mobile search. Thinking of putting together our own city-specific guides, DIY-style, now?

Of course, I use Google Maps all the time and have noticed that the number of business pins has increased significantly. Some are related, but not many. However, for the purposes of this story, I clicked on updates, which I usually ignore, and found “latest by location” content along with content from local guides.(Opens in a new window).

There were many glowing reviews of the restaurants I had not tried. Thanks to Google’s multi-food integration, you can scroll down and make a reservation, view the menu, find out when it’s busiest, etc. This is okay, but it is a tedious way to prepare a self-guided travel plan for tourists. But things are looking up in that regard.

2022 post on Google Maps immersive viewing(Opens in a new window) Advances in computer vision and AI describe how the tech giant has combined billions of street view and aerial images to create a rich, digital model of the world. Live View is helpful, detailing when business is open and how busy the aisles are. Using the new ARCore Geospatial API, developers can overlay city-specific content in augmented reality anytime there is Street View.

But it’s completely disjointed—there’s no editorial perspective or authenticity to the word itself. I guess this is because of the nature of the internet today. No one is in charge (not even Elon). But it doesn’t make the city an organized tour for tourists or locals.

Discover Los Angeles

(Credit: Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board)

In Downtown LA, I downloaded the official guide from the Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board.(Opens in a new window) And instantly taken with the UI: solid color bands on the screen to aid basic navigation such as DO, EAT, STAY, EVENTS (which includes a city-based experience) and real-time weather at the top. So far so good.

Choosing DO gave me a sense of play-by-play under the title of/or what would you do (yes, all of the titles were on a roll and I was still judged to think this was shouting, but I digress). Either go to an event or explore EL PUEBLO DE LOS ANGELES (ie, are you a thrill seeker or a history buff?).

I clicked more options, and found TOP Hollywood Nightclubs from K-Town Shopping Guide (my club days are behind me, and I’ve never really understood retail therapy). I kept clicking and got to Charlie Chaplin’s which looked good before the app crashed.

I restarted the app and went back to this section. It was slow, but eventually my GPS triangulated the opening times of the Little Tramp costume at the Natural History Museum. That wasn’t appealing, so I kept swiping left and right (yes, Tinder-style navigation) and skimmed through little articles on places where Chaplin filmed famous silent movies. The child (1921) That looked interesting so I picked it up and it (eventually) loaded on Google Maps.

I forgot to mention that there’s a dancing taco at the bottom left of the screen, which pissed me off to no end. For research purposes, I clicked on it hoping to make it stop. It was promotional content for dineL.A. Five years ago. I tried to go back to Charlie Chaplin LA but the map still doesn’t work. This time it has completely failed. I gave up and uninstalled the app.

Trying out TikTok

(Credit: Getty Images/SOPA Images/Lightrocket)

On every photogenic corner in LA, there’s someone shooting a TikTok or ephemeral form of frenetic content. So I opened TikTok and searched for “LA City Guides”.

As one would expect, it was a mixed bag, but there were some contributors, including Curry(Opens in a new window)As a travel vlogger who seems to criss-cross America on a regular basis. The tour guide(Opens in a new window) It’s engaging, if rather packed (several commenters have said, “This isn’t a day in LA, it’s something to occupy at least 72 hours”). But Carrie and her mic green in the sun pictures felt a little off – I couldn’t work out if this was a dream trip or a real experience.

Another self-appointed travel guru(Opens in a new window) Asking followers for future content, he showed more good times on the City of Angels, touring mid-century modern homes and 1920s gardens. I can see the value in this – an interactive guide for armchair travelers looking for a sunny vibe (especially in the winter months).

Alana was the most generic.(Opens in a new window)who offers tips for a day-in in LA, avoiding the usual tourist traps and recommending good things for cash-strapped visitors, including breakfast donuts at the farmer’s market (“Bring cash, no cards!”); Griffith Observatory (“Best museum in LA—and It’s free, I repeat – free!”), and stroll along historic Olvera Street and nearby Chinatown.

As usual on Tik Tok, Alana commented on covered distances and safety issues before posting fresh content to keep her followers coming back.

Los Angeles Times

Still in DTLA, I looked up and saw the (former) historic LA Times newspaper headquarters. I discovered that a local newspaper that started 142 years ago might have a good guide for tourists or residents in need of a break.

I downloaded the app(Opens in a new window)But it unfolded directly in the news headlines. At the bottom, a survey offers eNewspaper, COVID-19 (still), Media (video-based news) and My Library (articles to read later). Among my selections were: Highlights, California, Sports, Food, and more – hoping for a “guide to LA” I clicked further.

But the tourist guide was nowhere to be found, “Extra” in the newspaper only opened a left-to-center slide survey of everything from houses to company towns (Hollywood-in-industry coverage), real estate to obituaries (it’s there). It’s a joke there, and a good one. Nora Ephron has already written(Opens in a new window) It’s in. When Harry met Sally).

seriously? No tourism department! I can’t believe the house printing department missed this trade trick. I typed “GUIDE TO LA” into the search bar. Nothing major, just a string of (really disappointing) news. I shook it off.

A trip of nostalgia

This time I got very nostalgic for Vindigo(Opens in a new window). In the year Back in 1999, when I had a Palm Pilot, the city tour guide Vindigo was a vision. Although we didn’t have widespread Wi-Fi back then and you had to HotSync the Palm PDA device to get updated details, it had everything you needed to navigate the cityscape: opening hours, entertainment listings, Zagat restaurant reviews, and turn-by-turn directions from the nearest intersection.

You can even write your own notes (if you master the proprietary “Graffiti” recording function(Opens in a new window) (using the stylus) and transfers them onto Zagat so that they are included as much as possible. Yes, it had a gray look and a simple UX, but it performed brilliantly by the standards of late 90s technology (it also took up less than 700KB, imagine that with today’s bloated apps).

If you search(Opens in a new window) On LinkedIn, you’ll find all the names of former Windigo employees, including Dennis Crowley, who made the Silicon Alley (not SF) scene.(Opens in a new window)He co-founded Foursquare. In the year Crowley (like almost everyone else), who slipped away from Vindigo Rose during the 2001 dotcom crash, posted retro glimpses(Opens in a new window) The maximum time of the application on it Twitter feed(Opens in a new window).

Web3 Future

In fact, Crowley is going to bring the best of yesterday’s Windigo-style city guides to tomorrow’s Web3 mapping protocols with Living Cities.(Opens in a new window).

It’s still very much in the works, but co-founder Matt Miesnicks (former CEO at 6D. AI(Opens in a new window)Now the Niantic body) wrote(Opens in a new window) Something of a manifesto for Living Cities is “building a layer above today’s mapping platforms [and focusing] across experiences, apps, and interfaces to enable those apps in real places.

“Camera-phones allow us to express ourselves in 3D in the same way that mobile phones allow us to express ourselves in 2D,” says Miesnicks. “Meta (Facebook) calls their AR Cloud research project ‘Live Maps’ and I think that’s a good name for things that want to live. These digital-twins must be connected to the real space in both directions, all real-time signs of life from the weather to people passing by, sounds and things changing on the streets need to be reflected in the digital. He said.

LivingCities seems to be creating something very important in a location-based mesh-enhanced future of leisure travel. Because engaging TikTok-ers aside, today’s tourist apps aren’t cutting it — and we can’t expect out-of-towners to go all DIY with Google Maps and random pins.