"Building the iTourism experience"

There is a most important change going on out in the globe in how tourists are accessing information about destination.
In this process, the applications for smartphones for the purpose of tourism are becoming more and more populare.Nowadays, a lot of cities have meet the needs of tourists to see on the screen of smartphone the visitor information in details on a destination's attractions and amenities. The city of Ottawa joined to the cities offering this kind of apps to bring the fresh dynamic to the tourism industry in the capital of Canada.

The Ottawa has recently innagurated a new generation application, running on compact portable devices, including both iPhone and Blackberry (first of a kind for the latter), to increase its visibility and attractiveness for comers. The bilingual programm called Discover Ottawa offers a wide range of information and functionality of value to tourists such as flight schedules, local restaurants and cultural activities; social networking junkies may very well appreciate the ability to send facebook or twitter messages watermarked by Ottawa logos. Within the first 36 hours of launching, the application attracted more than 2000 downloads, and was rancked the eighth-most-downloaded social networking application in Canada.

Actually, the Canadian capital city has not pioneered the concept. The software authors count among their clients a number of museums and galeries, such as the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Smithsonian network of 19 museum, tne national zoo in States, the City Walk of Amsterdam, the Dallas Cowboys Stadium reporting drastic increase in number of download and consequently growing number of visitors. The Smithsonian estimates that since it lainched the
app in the summer 2010, there have been more than 10 million downloads.
What is inetersting is that the "Discover Ottawa" was developed with the help of $40 000 in finding from the city's budjet.Although the city officiales say it still early to quantify the impact of the project in terms of bottom line, we can see the very high ROI in terms of the investments and increased visits.
A modern portable device has grown into a full fleged high performance platform streaming out megabytes per second of high quality media, which is a greater experience compared to traditional audio guides. Those who do not own the compatible devices, are offered to rent one, finding the iPod Touch model a better choice than a traditional combersome hand held set.
Ottawa is trying hard to boost its image of a visitor friendly technologically advanced vibrant touristic destination.
Ottawa's officials want to let the world know that there are many reasons to visit "beyond the traditional institutions and the fact that it's the government seat here". This article shows one more fact in how the popularity of Discover Ottawa's exhibits there is a lot of potential to use mobile nechnology to promote the destination.