App puts Dublin in palm of your hand

DUBLIN has become the world’s first city to get a virtual tour guide phone application that helps visitors learn about its famous landmarks at the touch of a button.

Users simply point their mobile device at a building or object in the real world and retrieve information about it.

Dublin Tourism chief executive Frank Magee said the capital will become the first city in the world to have its own dedicated application.

“It delivers Dublin in the palm of your hand. It will inevitably be replicated by other leading tourist destinations around the world,” he said.

The Visit Dublin application uses innovative technology to allow visitors to use directional search to move about Dublin and discover their interests.

It also allows users to access electronically-stored data regarding a point of interest they are looking at, including overlaid images, details of opening times or audio files describing the facilities and their services.

The application covers the greater Dublin area and operates within a 10 kilometre radius from where the user is located. Its contents will be sourced from the VisitDublin.com website’s 7,000 pages of information and will initially cover 1,400 points of interest.

Other features include:

- Virtual tours of locations that can be explored from before a visit

- 81 audio clips that allow users to find the closest point of interest

- A special offers screen enabling bar, restaurant and tourism attraction owners to list discount coupons

- A daily bulletin with news updates on new attractions, events and tourist-related information.

The application can also function without any network connection, limiting roaming charges to the customer.

Tourism Minister Mary Hanafin said the application showed how Dublin city was leading the way in making use of innovative tourist tools.

“Using the very latest technology to get the most up to date information about Dublin – a city with so much history, culture, attractions and entertainment, and with so much going on every day, is a very positive development.”

“Some 3.8 million people visited Dublin last year.

“And the city is hugely popular with leisure and business tourists alike. Mobile technology is part of more and more people’s lives, and a vast wealth of information at your fingertips is what visitors will look for when visiting a vibrant city like Dublin,” she said.

Dublin Tourism estimates there will be 100,000 application downloads in the first 12 months.

It costs €2.99 and can be obtained by visiting www.visitdublin.com/App.