Let’s try QR Tourism

I will be asserting the obvious if I mention the government should provide easy services to tourist for promoting tourism. So today I’m here with the different claim; that Nepal as a rising tourism industry should find innovative ways to mitigate the information gap between tourist and tourism sites. Any sort of attractions including mountain, landscape, and especially historical/ cultural sites keep on attracting tourist only if they add some value to great tourism experience. I have seen many tourists making complains like ‘this place looks great, but I don’t know a single thing about it. This stone engraved is in the local language, I can’t get it”. In response to this problem, some tourism sites in Nepal have adopted a strategy like providing travel books, signboards, information pamphlets, and other measures for making information available to tourist. However, these are capital initiative, limited information loaded and old methods of disseminating information. In the age of digitalization, Nepal should find other modern and effective mechanism like ‘Tourist QR code’ information system that requires just a second of scanning and takes tourist to the vault of information about any place or a specific object.

The major feature of today’s world in the transformation of society from a system based on the consumption of material goods to a system that is more centered on consuming information. Amid such context, the government needs to consider the preference of new generation tourist who would visit Nepal not just to see our natural and cultural richness but to get deep information about them. The tourism sites remain valuable tourism asset if they effectively communicate with the tourist. So communication and access to information remain at the center of promoting tourism. In regard to the same, today’s technological development has offered various ways to improve the quality of visitor interaction with tourism sites. In 2016 the Ministry of Tourism and Sports in Thailand launched a program called “Thailand Scan me” in which tourism QR(Quick response) codes are positioned in different places to inform travelers about various tourism destination around the area.

Similarly, Nepal can also implement such innovative practice in major tourism destination, especially in cultural heritage sites to inform tourist about the place and specific temple or statue. Once they are installed in tourism sites, the visitors can just scan and get an abundance of information about the things they are looking at. This QR code will give privilege for visitors to access the information in either written or audio/visual form. Also with the internet, the QR code can direct to the video link, maps of the place, audio or text in many languages and other bonuses for tourist to enjoy the destination. And since the information remans on the online database, it can be easily updated without any problem. On top of that, it will increase tourist engagement hours in the destination, and there will be auto-marketing of the place when visitors share those information online with their contacts. The old version of ‘see-move on’ tourism will be changed to a new kind of ‘see-scan-get information and share’ tourism.

In my previous write-up, I had discussed about ways to digitalize humanities subject for adding more career scope to it. Connecting that idea with ‘tourist QR code’ in heritage sites, such initiations can also mitigate the gap between technology and humanities subjects as it will require history experts and IT professionals to work together. It’s a very organized, cheap and scientific method of disseminating information to tourist. Just in Pashupatinath we have hundreds of ancient statues preserved since centuries but we can hardly find information about those historical relics. Similar misfortune with Durbar squares, Changu Narayan, Budalinkhanta, Lumbini and other historical sites. With this small QR initiation, we can let the world explore and share our cultural richness among international societies.

The impact of technology in every sector had made the human experience easier than before. With continuous development in QR code system over the years, they can now be scanned easily with any smartphone having QR reader. During the availability of internet, QR Code can direct visitors to the online source from where they will get access to a vault of information, but if the information is encoded in encrypted code, then a limited amount of information can be accessed without internet too. QR codes can be scanned easily with a smartphone equipped with QR reader software, and it’s relatively inexpensive to implement. They can even be used to persuade additional visits like if a tourist in Lumbini scan QR code and get the recommendation of Bouddhanath or Swyambunath, they will surely build up an impulse to visit those place too.

Moreover, the QR system can revolutionize the tourism sector as its scope is broader than we think. Let’s take a look at how other countries have used QR code to promote tourism. Tourist can find QR code signboards placed on road networks in the Indian state of Kerala which give information about nearby tourist destinations. Similarly, in Whadjuk Trail Network of Australia, the codes allow trails users to listen to Indigenous stories or get information more about local flora and fauna. These tourism initiation using code scan feature gives a comprehensive understanding of the extent to which ‘tourist QR’ can improve the quality of tourism experience in Nepal. In regard to tourism, the essential feature of this system is that it allows specific and relevant information on the web to be accessed via smartphone.

Recently as the government has appointed a new tourism minister, and also we stand on edge to ‘Visit Nepal 2020’, this QR initiation can be breakthrough tourism promotion in upcoming years. When it comes to promoting Nepal as a tourist destination, our leaders never get fed-up giving big talks with keywords like tourism strategic plan, greater promotional objectives, mixed marketing models and so on, but have these talks achieved any good? Thus, our government should think of experimenting with this very practical ‘tourist QR’ idea and try promoting tourism in an innovative way.

Sites Consulted:

Thailand Scan me: http://www.qrcodepress.com/tourism-qr-codes-thailand-promote-local-tourist-attractions/8532086/

Kerala, India: https://scanova.io/blog/blog/2017/05/22/kerala-tourism-qr-codes/

Audio,Video and Text in QR code : https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/fashion/qr-codes-provide-information-when-scanned.html