Tourism industry, as every others sectors, has
developed the past few years lot of different applications in order to answer to
the customers’ needs. In fact, since the progress of smartphones technology,
applications have become inescapable.Many applications allowed to book a flight, a trip or
to get information about a destination. Monuments Tracker is one of the many
interactive travel guides, which propose to discover cities. However Monument
Tracker offers amazing additional tools: geolocation and augmented reality. The
application was created in 2010 by an actor of the tourism industry in
Cannes, Jean-Jacques Lottermoser.
How it works?
Monument Tracker is a unique tool which highlights the
heritage and the history of various cities. The application is available in
more than 38 cities in France and abroad. It is very easy to use as it is exploiting
geolocation and push functions. It enables the user to visit the city in his
own way and to be informed about the monuments, which surround him. Once the
monument is detected, the application provides automatically series of
information. As 60% of downloads are international, the application is
available in 9 different languages on Apple and Android. As many others apps,
Monument track is charged between 1,79 and 4,49 euros depending on cities.
Monument Tracker proposes also others features. First
of all, augmented reality, among others functions, allows the reconstitution of
sites. The application offers also thematic tours and search of monuments by
names. Finally, monument tracker plans to store contents in advanced for
foreign people and to only use the free GPS function when on site.
In order to collect data for the application,
developers work closely with cities. A partnership is created between Monument
Tracker and municipalities. Cities received 15% of the turnover of the
application and are able to update the information thanks to a back
office.
Impact on travel industry
Monument Tracker is an application which changes the
way to discover and to learn about a city. In fact lot of tourists, when
visiting often miss the opportunity to discover monuments that surround them.
Monument Tracker allows tourists to discover a city they
often explore partially. It allows traveling more lightly as the tourist gather
all information needed in only one device.
As it is well-known, cities and governments struggle
to collect funds for the renovation of their “heritage”, especially in France.
Monument Tracker tries to assist the cities and monuments to gather money. To make
tourists aware of the deterioration of historic monuments, Monument Tracker proposes
to collect small donations thanks to their application. In fact, on each
download, a small part is donated to a monument. For instance for a application
of 1,79 euros, 1 euros is donated to the renovation of the Mont Saint Michel.
Moreover for downloading the Paris apps, the buyer will automatically donate 2
euros out of 4,49 euros to the Pantheon. Donations are efficient as in only few years,
Monument tracker gathered 30 000 euros for the renovation of the Pantheon.
To conclude Monument Tracker is a useful and very
successful application, which only not thinks about profits but also includes
what matters the most to their founders, the heritage.
Alyssa, Coralie Deguerville & Lou
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