Tourism app for Herning and the surrounding area

Creates a better experience and attracts tourists from home and abroad.

Location-based and engaging content

Location-based attractions and relevant offers
Redeeming offers directly in the app
Maps and push notifications based on the user’s location
Increase engagement with video clips, quizzes and great stories
Favouritism without creating a user profile.

Make the experience interactive – and much better

VisitHerning wanted an app that could attract more tourists to the area and at the same time act as a supplement to the website and physical brochures. The aim is to take the visitor on a discovery tour in a new and different way and add something extra to a visit to Herning or Ikast-Brande Municipality.

The focus was not “just” to create an information platform, but to create an app that makes the visit a better, interactive experience. At the same time, nearby attractions and offers were to be promoted in collaboration with museums and businesses.

In addition, it was important to VisitHerning that they can easily update and add new content on an ongoing basis.

Dive into the app’s functions and features below.

Maps and push notifications promote attractions and offers

The app presents nearby attractions and relevant offers sorted by the user’s location. VisitHerning has full control over which content is highlighted when, as they can set the distance between the user and the attraction/offer before a push notification is triggered. This way, the visitor is always shown the right content at the right place and time.

The map is also implemented on top of Google Maps, so the visitor can open the map and use it for navigation. A great way to keep the user in the app.

If the visitor chooses to read more about an attraction in the app, current offers are automatically displayed, enabling (paid) collaborations with museums and businesses. The redemption of offers is also designed so that a user can only claim an offer once.

Favouritism without creating a user profile

VisitHerning originally wanted the visitor to create a user account to favour content and make the experience more personal. A wish we challenged for several reasons:

The requirement to create a user account can be a major barrier and cause the visitor to engage less with the content, when the opposite is intended.
With the ability to create a user account comes data handling requirements to comply with GDPR legislation.

Instead, we chose to store user-specific data locally in the app, utilising the phone’s internal storage options. This allows the visitor to favourite content without creating a user account, making interaction with the app more seamless.

Increase engagement with video clips, quizzes and great stories

To further enrich the visitor’s experience, there are video and audio clips at several of the attractions in the app.

Standing on top of Elia and enjoying the view of Birk while listening to Ingvar Cronhammar tell a great story about the giant just adds a whole new dimension.

Similarly, a quiz module makes it possible to “play” your way to more knowledge. Questions that relate to the given attraction help create more value and increase engagement.

Technical details

Native tourism app
Based on Google Firebase with user-friendly backend connected
Geolocation as a starting point for map view and push notifications
Dynamic content management via the backend
Gamification creates value and engagement
Language versioning: Danish and English – and ready for other languages, so Herning and the surrounding area can attract a lot of new tourists.