Mobile tourist guide supporting a smart city initiative: a Brazilian case study

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a smart city initiative presenting a mobile tourist guide developed for Natal, Brazil. Design/methodology/approach – This study has employed an exploratory case study approach to gain more knowledge about a smart city initiative and a mobile tourist guide in Brazil. The city of Natal was selected for this case study since it was one of the host cities during the FIFA World Cup 2014. The collected data for this research came from government (e.g. Natal Smart City plan), academic sources (e.g. Metropole Digital Institute (IMD)), and tourists’ information from the mobile tourist guide application. Findings – The smart city initiative of Natal, and the mobile tourist guide (named Find Natal) responsible for collecting, processing, sharing, storing and analysing the tourist behaviour were detailed in the paper. The Smart City Consortium in Natal is developing an interoperable and distributed infrastructure that is advancing the state-of-the-art in information and communication technologies (ICT) for planning and managing smart cities. The IMD implemented an application, which aims to enhance the traveller’s experience through software programs designed to leverage the infrastructure mechanisms behind the city. The data gathered by the application was analysed to show how it was used during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Originality/value – The results show a developed ICT initiative in a Latin American country. This study offers a starting point for destinations willing to implement and deploy a smart city initiative.

SOLOMO – are hospitality SMEs able to move beyond traditional websites in their digital marketing roadmap for Expo 2020?

“…Buhalis and Foerste (2015, p. 153) go so far to turn the SOLOMO term into SOCOMO, with the CO standing for Context and include a large variety of context related variables, such as time, air pressure, weather, preferences, emotional state, goals and more, in the drive to personalize user experience. Similar thoughts are echoed by Cacho et al (2016, p. 168) with various levels of context: Time, physical (including location), user, computing.…”

Infrastructure Elements for Smart Campuses: A Bibliometric Analysis

“…The main feature of smart cities is the tracking and reporting system available to monitor vehicular movement and the urban environment. SIM808 combined the features of GPS with and complete quad-band global system for mobile communications to track the location of vehicles and people instantaneously [73][74][75][76]. SIM808 is a smart grid along with Arduino capable of creating interactive electronic objects such as text, audio, animation and other forms of visualisation that are important to smart city development [74][75][76].…”

Smart Tourism Destinations Initiatives in Natal-RN City: A Qualitative Approach

“…As TICs tornam as cidades mais acessíveis e agradáveis para residentes e visitantes por meio de serviços interativos que interconectam todas as organizações locais para fornecer serviços em tempo real e usar os dados centralmente para melhor coordenação (Cacho et al, 2016). O turismo inteligente aumenta a visão compartilhada dos residentes e visitantes, e dá o apoio necessário para manter a vantagem competitiva dos destinos inteligentes (Femenia-Serra, Perles-Ribes & Ivars-Baidal, 2019).…”

“…Os esforços municipais de Natal vem se voltando para tornar a cidade um DTI, com o Programa Natal Cidade Inteligente e Humana (Mendes Filho, Silva & Silva, 2019), através da assinatura de termo de cooperação entre a Prefeitura Municipal, representada pela Secretaria Municipal de Planejamento, a Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte [UFRN] e a Rede Brasileira de Cidades Inteligentes e Humanas. Houve o lançamento de dois planos de trabalho para início do programa, na cidade: (1) dados abertos, onde está sendo desenvolvido um portal de dados abertos para o governo municipal, no intuito de disponibilizar as atividades e gastos públicos para a população, dando maior transparência para fiscalização, controle e participação das atividades do setor público (Mendes Filho, Silva & Silva, 2019); (2) turismo inteligente, no qual foi desenvolvido um aplicativo turístico, chamado Visit Natal, desenvolvido pela UFRN, com o objetivo de melhorar a experiência do viajante no destino, pois a atividade turística contribui significativamente para a economia da cidade (Cacho, Mendes-Filho, Estaregue, Moura, Cacho, Lopes, & Alves, 2016).…”