The challenge

In the predominantly rural county of Powys in Wales, tourism accounts for a third of all employment and contributes more than £650 million to the local economy every year. That makes it imperative for the council to continuously develop and support this vital industry, but with limited resources and constrained budgets, it needed to find more creative ways to attract and retain visitors.

The council investigated possible uses of IT to support tourism, as part of an INTERREG project funded by the European Union. However, throughout the county, visitors struggle to connect to the Internet with their mobile phones and tablets, particularly when they roam into more rural areas. “We have super slow broadband and problematic mobile coverage, which makes everything more of a challenge here,” explains Julie Lewis, tourism officer for Powys County Council. “Any IT-based solution had to be able to work in this context.”

The solution

Powys County Council selected Geosho’s Rougeo platform and used this location-based online Content Management System to create a series of smartphone app-guided walks focusing on topics such as heritage, wildlife and local points of interest. It included simple-to-use maps, quizzes, stories, history, photography, pictures and text within its apps to create a highly engaging visitor experience tailored to child and adult interests alike. Currently, it has 25 such routes – called Trails Mid Wales – available to download for Apple and Android devices.

The Rougeo platform also drives the Trails Mid Wales website – www.trailsmidwales.com – so visitors can view routes wherever they have access to the internet and download and print routes from .pdf documents. In addition, Powys County Council has used Rougeo to create six accompanying iBooks for visitors to read at their leisure on the web or tablet devices.

Rougeo is ideal for rural Powys, as visitors do not need a constant Internet connection to use the trails. They simply download the apps from home, from their holiday accommodation or from a local tourism office where they have mobile or Wi-Fi coverage. Then, while they walk on the trail the app detects their location using GPS and displays information relating to each point along the route.

With tourism critical to the economy of mid Wales, Powys County Council has introduced a series of walking trails for smart phones and tablets to attract more tourists into the region. These imaginative apps are helping to increase visitor numbers and encouraging greater interaction with local businesses.

Rougeo Case Study

Powys County Council

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Rougeo CMS Interface

Council employees find it easy to use Rougeo to create new trails and can add or update content using the internet-based Rougeo Content Management System themselves whenever they need to. And because Rougeo is a cloud-based solution, it requires little or no involvement from IT departments. Employees simply walk the route, authoring, creating way markers and uploading pictures as they go. If, months later, a section of path becomes impassable, a view changes or information needs altering or adding, the team can quickly capture and publish updates. What is more, as Rougeo allows two-way communication, visitors can also use the app to notify the council of problems such as a broken stile or fallen tree.

The benefits

Rougeo helps Powys County Council to encourage more people into its area and increase the numbers of repeat visits. For example, if visitors use one trail app and enjoy it, they may engage more with the local area and return to the county to do another trail. Likewise, users of www.trailsmidwales.com or iBooks can see 360o images of stunning views, which helps to motivate them to visit and see the view for themselves.

At the same time, Rougeo helps the council to promote attractions, pubs, cafes and galleries that visitors might not know about, but that are perhaps just moments from their current location. “The vast majority of our work is about trying to maximise the economic benefit of tourism,” Lewis says. “Rougeo enables us to give visitors information that might encourage them to stay longer in our county and spend more money with local businesses.”

Powys County Council uses Rougeo to help it distribute tourism income more equally around the county. Lewis explains: “There are several walking ‘honey-pot’ areas in Powys that feature in all the guide books such as the Brecon Beacons. Rougeo is helping us to draw tourists away from the busier areas to less well-known, but equally beautiful, destinations.”

In the first few months of the trails being available, the app was downloaded over 800 times, and in excess of 4,500 walkers are estimated to have used the routes. Additional visitors accessed the trails via the web site trailsmidwales.com, and feedback has been very positive.

Awarding the app the highest possible five stars rating, one visitor wrote:

“I love it; we just took it out with us on a family walk and it transformed it into an adventure for the whole family.”

Another visitor, who also gave the app five out of five stars, observed: “I like the popup notifications when I get near something to give me more information.”

Looking ahead, Powys County Council plans to extend its use of Rougeo to introduce cycle and horse riding trails in the area. What is more, the council anticipates that Rougeo will help it to work more collaboratively with local businesses in the future. The platform provides analytical information about groups using the trail apps, including the number of people who have downloaded the app, walked specific routes and how far they’ve got – and this valuable insight can be used to identify further opportunities to increase visitor numbers.

Benefits in brief

Rougeo• Enhances the visitor

experience, encouraging visitors to make repeat and extended stays in Powys

• Requires little or no IT set-up, making it easy to create any number of trails and update them at any time over the Internet

• Delivers trail content to a website, smartphones and iBooks

• Offers rich and varied media, including mapping, audio, photography and text to create lots of interest for users

• Helps attract tourists to less well-known, quieter parts of the county

• Provides analytical data to tailor trails and support new revenue-earning initiatives

“Rougeo enables us to give visitors information that might encourage them to stay longer in our county and spend more money with local businesses.”

Julie Lewis, tourism officer,Powys County Council

Geosho core technology 6 Bridge Street, Caernarfon, Gwynedd LL55 1AB

00 44 (0) 1286 673441 geosho.com

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