You. Smart. Thing., Landmrk, Imagemakers, and Oodl
There are various problems with the current apps used by travellers to get from their starting point to venues when attending live events.
Existing apps tend not to be up to date with localised information – such as temporary road closures – which can create issues in navigation. Critically, there is a lack of personalisation for those who may require special assistance in planning their route, either because they have luggage or mobility issues.
Covid-19 has added a further problem during the travel to and from events; while there might be social distancing in the arenas, current mapping apps don’t take into account the volume of people travelling along specific routes to the destination.
The leisure sector has pretty much closed down due to Covid-19. The net result when you calculate the costs for ticket vendors and transport operators not being able to run at full capacity, in addition to food and beverage and hotels, results in a loss of around £142 billion to the economy.
Urban Tourism 5.0 is focused on using 5G technologies to deliver a next generation ‘Travel Assistant’ service. It will help the recovery of the live events and leisure sector, incentivising advance journey planning by providing creative and engaging rich media navigation to and from venues and events as they come back on stream.
The Urban Tourism 5.0 Travel Assistant is here to fill in the gaps left by other providers and create a personalised and integrated experience for travellers. Using 5G-enabled sensors at stations and major venues combined with booking and travel information, it will create forecast and real-time traveller demand insights for rail and road transport network operators.
‘Last mile’ routes to destinations, and investigations into how to influence travellers will be explored, in order to make attendees’ travel easier. This will provide a transport demand model for large, cultural events wholly enhancing the event experience for those attending.
The information that the Travel Assistant delivers will be way above the type of standard navigation information you would see typically. It can also be overlayed with interviews and content by artists and performers. This requires a much greater demand on the technology, which is provided by the capabilities of 5G.
Launching in September 2020, the project will run for an initial 18 months, with a regional focus on Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 events that start in April and will run in to 2022. The consortium will be deploying the Urban Tourism 5.0 Travel Assistant service for visitors to multiple events in and around the Coventry and the West Midlands region.
