Do you imagine being able to access information on the country’s tourist destinations with images, videos, audio guides, and recommendations, digitally and for free, just by consulting an application on your cell phone?
Well, this could be a reality at the national level and that is what the Real Travel application intends through geolocation and augmented reality so that tourists can find routes and activities of interest, to discover and explore destinations at their own pace.
It all started with an alliance between the Costa Rican Accessible Tourism Network and Real Travel, after a meeting at the Annual Meeting of the International Social Tourism Organization for the Americas, where a pilot plan emerged to put all the information in the hands of travelers of the 11 accessible beaches in Costa Rica.
“What we do is tell the story, build the story of the attractions, written in an entertaining way for the tourist, with images from the oldest to the newest, videos with data, travel recommendations, and contact information, all in augmented reality. . All destinations have a history, legends, traditions, stories of native peoples and this is how we are forming this ecosystem so that the traveler can participate from the tourist offer that is not visible”, said Marta Lorenzini, CEO, and Co-Founder of Real Travel.
However, when digitizing the accessible beaches and after a tour of Costa Rica, several Chambers of Tourism expressed that they already had previous plans to create applications to publicize the tourist offer of their regions, but each one separately.
It is at that moment that a new project arises so that the information on the tourist attractions of these regions can be unified and consulted through a single platform.
“The alliance began with the theme of accessible beaches, offering all the information on these places, but we realize that the country can be unified in technology, not seen as isolated destinations. An initial tour was made to listen to the Chambers, the business community, about what they thought of technology and having a tool for the whole country, many of them indicated that they already had the idea beforehand, and even the budget to do it”, said Stephanie Sheehy, director of the Costa Rican Accessible Tourism Network.
But the idea went even further, and to unify the entire tourist offer in the country on a single platform, they present a national project to the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT), with the possibility of digitizing the information from the Guides of the Tourist Development Centers that the institution has previously prepared, according to Lorenzini.
Currently, the ICT has 11 guides and ten mini-guides, hoping that in the coming years it will have all the offers of the 32 Tourist Development Centers of the country, and that is where Real Travel could participate to place all the information of the country. In one single place.
