Tourism 2.0
Tourism 2.0 or “Tourism Technology” is a term that encompasses all social, cultural, managerial, and value-adding activities of the tourism industry. Tourism Technology also incorporates and encourages technological advancements and economic development in the tourism industry.

“Tourism Technology”, initially based on the concept of cultural technology, is a more comprehensive term covering knowledge used to add to the value of tourism products on a micro level and the management of the travel and tourism industry on a macro level. New tourism products are also the end result of tourism technology combining with other industries. These include medical tourism, educational tourism, agricultural tourism, marine tourism and the application of information technology to the travel and tourism industry.

Our team has been working as a territorial & tourism technology consultant since 1993. In 2005 began the development on Arianna, a next generation Web 2.0 tour and activity guide engine for public actors, local tourism enterprises, suppliers and tour operators. In June of 2007, Arianna was officially released and now boasts a user base of 900+ projects in EU countries. EZD’s professionals are also very active in fostering tourism technology to develop and deploy IT platforms for tourism actors learning communities, online communication and many other projects.

There are actually two main “flavours” of our guide

Arianna BT

Via a Bluetooth application you can look over suggested tours of attractions and current events, and even take advantage of certain discounts. The downloadable application offers visitors a wealth of information at their fingertips about the non-accommodation tourism products in the region.
Another interesting application of Arianna BT is touristical guide for blind people, helping a sustainable fruition of territories in qich the guide is installed (not only tourism POI’s are included, but also emergency info, security tips and many other).

AriannAR

We’ve seen augmented reality used in a variety of applications, from futuristic baseball cards to taking a tour of the starship Enterprise. Many of these uses have centered on entertainment, but some have started to focus on providing helpful information to answer questions. Where can I find a restaurant? Who’s the artist named in the plate of this ourse? Historically accurate depictions of the past for tourists falls somewhere in between the two.  A team at EZD developed a version of Arianna, our IT touristical guide that permit users to point any spot in a territory and see “what’s around”, receive info on points of interest and many other useful functions, from an app freely downloadable from territorial’s websites.

Learning communities : The Internet’s capabilities imply a different type of thinking in terms of how to make full use of its learning-enhancing features and pedagogical potential. As one of the key affordances of the Internet is for communication, (e.g. through email, bulletin boards, chat rooms, electronic conferencing), the
combination of collaborative and constructivist (or critical thinking) techniques with technology are argued to significantly enhance the learning process and learning outcomes dramatically. The electronic implementation of collaborative learning often results in the development of a virtual classroom, whereby tools such as electronic bulletin boards, chat rooms, e-mails, grade books and quizzes are used in order to provide feedback, distribute material and develop a learning community similar to a traditional classroom