Company Background
City Sightseeing Derry ~ Londonderry, owned by James Deehan, is an open top bus tour operator that offers a Hop On and Hop Off service, at any of the bus stops on route taking in all the best sights and attractions of Derry has to offer. With numerous stops conveniently located along the route, James wished to create a new service through a mobile application that will invoke tourist and sightseeing information based on proximity around the city.
Challenge
The concept will be an extension of the current bus experience, a standalone purchasable application providing an all-round tourist location intelligent system triggered by proximity to specific tourist attractions. The main issue facing City sightseeing Derry ~Londonderry was the lack of expertise in the area of User Interface design or Software Development representing a challenge for the company. They require the knowledge provider’s expertise to help with the development of the location based intelligent systems and the development of an API (Application program interface) for the deployment of the application on multiple mobile devices and operating systems.
Solution
To overcome this obstacle City Sightseeing Derry ~ Londonderry, secured an Innovation Voucher, which equated to £5000 worth of expert support from The North West Regional College (NWRC). Dr Kevin Meehan, NWRC, lead the research, consulting with City Sightseeing Derry ~ Londonderry and agreeing that the proposed mobile application will use geolocation data to enhance the experience of tourists using the City Sightseeing tour.
Impact
Following completion for the Innovation Voucher, City Sightseeing had a multilingual mobile app, created using PhoneGap Build to allow for easier maintenance by City Sightseeing Derry~Londonderry. This is a cross-platform development tool and is used to produce an app for the Android and iOs mobile operating systems. The mobile app has been successfully launched and not only expected to increase customer levels of satisfaction but also generate additional revenue.
