Rediscover Innsbruck: “The right local-based information at the right time - available for everyone!”

Innsbruck – With impeccable timing and just in time for the 2008 EUROTM, the world’s largest active-RFID Use Case in the tourism and leisure sector goes online. The Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism at the University of Innsbruck has successfully attempted to establish an automatic information system ensuring real-time transmission of location and target group specific information in cooperation with local partners in Austria and Bavaria. The results of this cooperation are available on www.innfo.at.

Tyrol and particularly the City of Innsbruck are renowned for offering an impressive combination of leisure activities and cultural events specially designed to attract and appeal to a diverse target group. In order to meet the high expectations placed upon the quality of information by both, tourists and locals, the Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism developed www.innfo.at, an intelligent, highly innovative and novel information system planned and implemented cross-border in the course of the Interreg IV A project ilbi, standing for intelligent local-based information (for further information see www.ilbi.eu). This worldwide unique project could only be achieved with help of the generosity and enthusiasm of the local promoters and the particularly great support and commitment of the Tiroler Zukunftsstiftung.

The principal role of this novel information system is to provide both, the tourists and the locals, not only with culturally and touristically interesting and useful information but also with information on leisure and recreational activities, local industry and gastronomy partners in a user-friendly approach using a highly innovative transmission technology with real-time location accuracy. The City of Innsbruck thus managed to personalise the world’s third-largest sport event for both, tourists and locals. With the help of specially developed intelligent matching-methods and on the basis of the user’s personal profile, the actual data on the person’s position and the meteorological and time data it is possible to define which information is the most suitable depending on the kind of user, the user’s actual position, the time, the weather and the user’s language profile. Users will for this purpose be provided with an active RFID-tag, issued free of charge (but against payment of a deposit) at various distribution points allowing non-contact, non-line-of-sight and real-time location and tracking within a radius of 150 meters. As soon as the signal emitted by the active RFID-tag is captured by a reader installed at one of the several innfo-access points on site, information, such as sightseeing or event tips, is generated on basis of specified parameters and is sent to the user’s cell-phone via SMS within short notice and free of charge.

To assure the delivery of high quality information, the University of Innsbruck entered into a cooperation not only with various local culture and leisure organisations, but also with the local industry and commerce and the hotel and gastronomy industry as well as with public institutions. Each user can easily create and maintain his/her detailed personal profile online at www.innfo.at in order to then receive the most suitable information on site. The user also has the possibility to add personal innfos via this online platform; this user-generated content is only entered into the innfo-system definitely after editing. Those users interested, can run a simulation for a predefined and fictitious user and on basis of meteorological and time data on the website, illustrating the functionality of this novel and innovative information system, and are thus able to access the information potentially available online.

User Information: Participating users can freely decide at any time if they want to be tracked by the RFID-system or not as a convenient ON/OFF button is integrated in the tag for easy and individual activation and deactivation. There is no personal data encoded on the tag. In an individual voluntary agreement, innfo.at commits itself to protect the user’s right of informational self-determination and to actively provide the user with all required information. Further information on data protection is available on the website www.innfo.at. The minimum age limit for participation in innfo.at is 14 years.

University of Innsbruck
Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism
Interreg IV A - project ilbi
Universitaetsstrasse 15
A-6020 Innsbruck

Fon: +43-512-570512-3
Fax: +43-512-570512-9
ilbi@uibk.ac.at
www.ilbi.eu / www.innfo.at

Interreg IV A project ilbi, standing for intelligent local-based information

University of Innsbruck
Department of Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism
Interreg IV A - project ilbi
Universitaetsstrasse 15
A-6020 Innsbruck

This release was published on openPR.