‍

In this keynote, together with Julia Jakoubek, from the Vienna Tourist Board, we explored the role of destination apps by taking a look at the ivie app.

‍

Julia started her presentation by introducing us to their visitor economy strategy. Through this strategy they started focusing more on the destination management, rather than just on the marketing. The aim was to improve the experience of their guests in Vienna, which they did by opening two new tourist offices and by developing a digital city advisor.

‍

‍

She mentioned that as individuals spend more and more time on their smartphones, creating an app to have personal communication with visitors would be most appropriate. The app was thought to take on the role of your friend and show travellers different sides of the city based on their preferences. From the content perspective, the app focuses on premium content and authentic experiences, with the target being to give a deeper perspective of the city. Through this new content strategy they wanted to inspire people and discover new and surprising things across the city, with their target audience being European visitors, but also Vienna inhabitants who wanted to discover the city in a new way.

‍

Julia explained that this last target group became very important during the pandemic due to all the lockdowns. Julia highlighted that one of the purposes of this app was also to discover more about what people like and enjoy about the city, what they do, what they visit and the problems they encounter.

‍

ivie, as Julia introduced it to us, is Vienna's personal city guide, which has many features, including: +200 sights, +1.000 locations, Vienna City Cards, tips on geolocation, walks and guides, UX-UI and individualisation and personalisation features.

‍

‍

App performance and insights

‍

Since its launch in June 2020, it has been downloaded 100.000 times, with 55% of them coming from Android users, and the other 45% form iOS users. Nonetheless, 53% of the sessions come from iOS users, and the other 47% comes from Android ones, with a total of around 320.000 sessions. When looking at where it is used, Julia explained that 56% of users are Austrian, 20% are German (which is Vienna's most important international market, and 5% are Italian.

‍

‍

System architecture

‍

ivie has a centralised location database with over 3.000 locations, for which external location sources from open government data have been used. The app has microservices implementations, such as weather ones, and they employ headless-CMS for multimedia content.

‍

‍

Experience the whole city

One of the targets of the app was to let users discover the whole city, which is done through unique stories, a personal tone of voice, over 200 curated sightseeing locations over the entire city and multimedia content. In addition, the app features discounts for different attractions in Vienna.

‍

Julia also talked about ivie's tips, which introduce hidden gems through push notifications based on 20 geofenced locations in Vienna. She explained that this requires users to give location and notifications permissions, which only about 1/3 of them do. Nonetheless, these provide a basic understanding of the visited places, and they are planning to provide personalised messages.

‍

She also gave us an insight into what the walks and guides feature, such as walking trails around Beethoven's location, audio podcasts, and adapted audio content to make the experience more immersive and tangible based on geolocations.

‍

Julia explained that the Vienna City Cards have a digital version of themselves with all features on ivie. These have over 200 discounts and mobility options and display all benefits. She noted that only 1/3 of cards are sold in the online shop, nonetheless 65% of users use the digital card on ivie.

‍

She then gave a short overview of their campaign strategies, which focus on: advertising the app in Vienna and targeting travellers in the city. In addition, their target is to build the app's image and to gain app installs. Julia also explained that they target travellers along the entire user journey: on airplane screens, at arrival in the airport and on smartphones through hyperlocal targeting at the airport and train station.

‍

What are the key takeaways of how we can select the right content?

‍

Julia explained that they decided to develop their app when over-tourism started becoming a pressing issue by means of presenting the city alternatively and spreading tourists. The app responds to generic city destination apps by offering curated content that would result valuable for travellers.

‍

Where is ivie going in the next few years?

‍

Julia highlighted that their objective is to make ivie more personalised, giving tips to users based on the time of the day and the context of users, which doesn't necessarily mean that they will integrate the latest technology.