IN-DEPTH: Do you have doubts about how to creatively use geo-location social networks in tourism? Maybe you should check out this campaign, writes EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta.

The travel and tourism industry has made novel use of geo-location social networks over the past year or so. One particularly innovative example of this trend is the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) decision to opt for Foursquare as a mechanism to open rural and remote areas in Montenegro to tourists. UNDP has worked in Montenegro for over a decade with the mandate of reducing regional imbalances and supporting green business among others. So it set itself the challenge of boosting the number of tourist to the stunning yet undeveloped northern region where the poorest of the poor in the country live.

Montenegro welcomes some 1.5 million tourists a year but only five to seven per cent of these visit the northern region which, though poor, is home to three of the country’s five national parks, many Unesco protected heritage sites and so on.  As part of plans to boost the number of tourists to the area, UNDP looked at options that would share authentic stories of the region as well as provide useful information to enable visitors plan their trip.

Milica Begovic Radojevic, UNDP Economy and Environment Cluster Leader in Montenegro says: “Our hunch was that geo-location services, like Foursquare, could be a useful tool to nudge tourists who already visit the southern region, to venture out north.”

The idea was that a tourist would need a phone and a rental car or transportation to get to the north but all other information could be delivered via Foursquare – both logistical information and also authentic stories that they might wish to experience. “In short, our idea was to mobilise local communities to tell these unique, untold stories and then use Foursquare as the ‘tour guide’ to tell them,” explains Radojevic. This would create a direct link between the tourists and the communities, which would lead to both a more unique experience and, as such, have a greater impact on the local economy. To achieve this the UNDP mobilised communities in these rural areas to first vote about stories that are not told in mainstream marketing. Then communities got behind these different stories and used Foursquare to actually tell them.

UNDP Montenegro came up with the idea, but could not have executed it without two national partners: NGO DigitalizujMe and a private sector company DomainMe. “The results of these prototypes are six new tourism stories (as one or two-day tours) told by communities themselves and mapped out in Foursquare (for a sample of what stories look like in Foursquare, see Medieval Century in Montenegro and Durmitor National Park.

EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta talks to Radojevic about the initiative in detail.

EFT: How did you get going with this initiative?

MBR: First, we wrote a blog about the idea in February last year with the intention of figuring out if someone had already done something similar and if there was scope to cooperate, avoid mistakes and pick up on some good tips in using geo-location services for tourism development. Surprisingly, the idea generated a lot of interest nationally, mainly from the grassroots movement and private sector organisations interested in digital and socially responsible activities. This provided the push to prototype the idea and see if it could work. During the following few months, we partnered with two organisations nationally to pursue the idea. This coincided with the launch of the UNDP’s first Innovation Fund by the UNDP Regional Center for Europe and CIS, where we submitted the idea and subsequently were selected as one of the winners.

EFT: Was it a completely novel idea or did you draw on developments in the industry?

MBR: We saw that the Mayor of Tampa led an effort to use Foursquare to promote his city as a tourism destination and there are several places globally that designed their own Foursquare badge for the purpose of tourism promotion.

But we found no record of another initiative that has used Foursquare both as a tour guide brought to you by local communities (a tool to tell a story) and logistics support giving all relevant information to carry out a tour. We believed that by providing all the necessary information at your fingertips, Foursquare would create a direct link between a tourist and local communities, and thereby not only lead to economic growth but create a unique experience for the tourist. Several write-ups by some renowned publications proved this such as NetProphet’s story about the initiative.  In fact hasn’t been tried elsewhere.

EFT: How did it fit in with your overall objectives?

MBR: UNDP Montenegro has worked in this sector with the Government of Montenegro for almost a decade, so the initiative falls well within our overall strategy to support economic development based on efficient use of natural resources.

EFT: What did you set out to achieve?

MBR: We wanted to stimulate economic development in the northern region by using modern technologies to drive higher volume of tourists from the south to the north, create a direct link between tourists and local communities, empower local communities to create and promote their own products and destinations.

EFT: Can you take us through the execution?

MBR: The execution went through several stages, in order to really make it a truly user- and community-driven process:

1.Voting: First we identified ten new tourism stories in the north and asked people to vote about which ones they would they like to see turned into a tourism product. We had over 500 people in a week cast their votes and offer new suggestions.

2.Team formation: Based on the voting, we selected stories and mobilised volunteers who would go on the field to research various aspects of the stories - logistical information for the tourists (where to stay, what taxis to use and which not to use, what to eat, where to eat, etc) and story-related information (which sites to see and why)

3.Testing: Then we invited bloggers and outdoor enthusiasts from the region (Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia ,Bosnia and Herzegovina) who were accompanied by bloggers from Montenegro to test out our stories as one or two-day tourism products. Based on their feedback we tinkered with the stories (feedback was super useful - they offered tips such as ‘make sure you warn people about the incline in hike X or that they could bike or take a cab to the Lake Y and so on’). This stage helped to improve the design of the tourism products, as well as spread the word about the initiative regionally (here are few samples of these stories from Serbia (and one more), Montenegro and Slovenia).

Each stage was followed with an intense Twitter-blogging media campaign. There were over 80 articles nationally and another 20 regionally and globally about the initiative during the June-October 2012 period. A critical factor in generating a buzz about the initiative was the partnership with well-respected institutions - Domain.Me and DigitalizujMe.

EFT: Do you think the initiative has succeeded?

MBR: Well we are very much in the process of monitoring its success. It was completed at the end of the summer tourism season, so the 2013 season should show how successful we have been in drawing tourists north. The impact of the project has been interesting. On the one hand we’ve seen a rise in private sector companies using Foursquare in just about the same way we’ve applied it to tourism. On the other, UNDP has been approached by the National Parks of Montenegro to provide assistance in using new technologies and social networks to create a two-way communication with clients (tourists, educational camps and so on) and communities. But more importantly, what we’ve noticed is a more intense national discussion at various levels on the role of new technologies on economic development.