Working with the Nicosia Tourism Board, Blupath worked to deploy the Infopoint platform and use it to help the organization engage with visitors and tourists to the Nicosia City Centre. The objective of the project was to support the touristic profile of the city by providing mechanisms by which tourists could learn about the history and details of the various landmarks around them while going about the city.
The Nicosia Tourism Board was looking to develop a solution that would be both powerful, wide-reaching, and capable of delivering rich content to the visitors in the city, while at the same time being relatively inexpensive and simple to maintain.
The solution eventually decided upon, was to deploy a number of information kiosks next to landmarks in the center of the city. 3 different designs were developed and adopted – 2 designs of larger scale kiosks, to be deployed next to high profile landmarks with Information about the nearby landmark printed on the kiosk itself, as well as a design of a smaller sign with only limited information printed directly on the sign, and deployed near a large number of lower profile landmarks and museums.
Once the design of the signs was finalized, an account for the Nicosia Tourism Board was registered on the Infopoint platform, and a database of information about the landmarks of Nicosia was set up on the platform. A multi-media rich, multi-lingual digital guide to the landmarks of the city was generated by the platform, and digital engagement access points set up on the kiosk designs. These access points combined QR codes and NFC tags, making it possible for any individual looking at the signs, to either scan a code, or touch their phone on the sign, in order to be redirected to the relevant page from the digital guide presenting more information about the nearby landmark. This is all possible without the need for tourists and visitors to download any new, separate apps on their phone.
11 Information Kiosks have now been deployed, providing information about 15 nearby landmarks. Visitors to the city can read about the landmarks on the signs themselves, and have the option to get to richer digital information by interacting with the digital access point. As the QR and NFC technologies used are passive, meaning they require no power to function, the costs of maintenance of the kiosks are minimal. Visitors accessing the digital guide can also use it to help navigate themselves to the landmarks, whereas the city is able to get useful statistical information about the interactions of city visitors with the deployed Information kiosks.
