As more and more smart cities emerge all over the world, smart tourism is becoming increasingly important. The difference between the two? Smart cities focus primarily on improving the lives of their residents, whereas smart tourism initiatives are focused on pleasing visitors, whilst also enhancing the quality of life for local residents.

A key aspect of any smart destination is the integration of ICTs into physical infrastructure (Gretzel, Sigala, et al., 2015). When a tourism destination gets smarter, the tourists’ needs and demands are expected to be fulfilled more efficiently to create a better tourist experience. Smart apps and products are implemented across the user’s experience to accommodate the visitors that come to explore their city, such as virtual 3D city maps, LED-animations to illuminate iconic buildings, tourism websites with smart apps such as a water fountain locator, but also something as ‘simple’ as creating free Wi-Fi network accessible around the city. 

Time for us to take a look at some of the future trends of smart tourism:

1. Accommodate booking beforehand

The way people like to book things is changing - more and more people book accommodations but also activities before leaving their homes. If anything, what Corona has taught us is that time is precious and nothing is self-evident, therefore people want to make sure they are getting the experiences they want by planning and booking more beforehand. This also works for planning ahead on location; in the north of Germany, in Lübeck Bay, the local tourism office has implemented sensors at the entry and exit points of a few adjacent beaches that can be tracked in real-time by its guests, and again at the nearby parking lots. Let’s say, for example, that you were planning to visit Timmendorfer Strand, but the live ticker on the website shows you that the beach at Scharbeutz is actually a lot less busy today. You might want to adapt your plan and go there instead. 

2. Utilize the current BYOD-culture

Some tourist operators do this already, and the tourist operators that aren’t should consider facilitating the BYOD-culture (‘Bring Your Own Device’) by making tours accessible from a visitor’s smartphone. People are glued to their phones and tablets these days and generally like to use their own devices to explore a city. Create an app to guide visitors through the city for example, by showing them on a map where the next public restroom is. This is the type of information a tourist would benefit greatly from. 

3. Wearable technology

Wearable technology is enhancing the tourist experience in large destinations. Smart watches and tech wristbands can do anything from opening your cabin door on a cruise to downloading your boarding pass on a plane or even voice activating local directions. 

4. Explore new technologies

As is shown by the examples above, technology makes tours more accessible: Recent advancements in audio technologies like Listen Technologies’  Navilution® Wi-Fi, an automated GPS multilingual commentary system, are proving a win/win for both visitors and tour operators. Navilution also allows tour operators to collect, analyze, and share passenger information, making their job of building stronger sales and marketing solutions considerably easier and more powerful, plus enhancing the guest experience.

5. Accessibility & Inclusivity

 Accessibility of a city and its points of interests can, for example, be enhanced by smart technologies through creating maps with wheelchair-friendly routes and access points. Where accessibility has always been and will always be an important topic, inclusivity is perhaps a rather new development that is gaining importance quickly in life, and in tourism. The great thing about technology and apps is that it’s available to anyone with a smartphone; regardless of race, gender, income level, sexual orientation. A nice example of inclusive tourism are beacons placed at touristic sights that Amsterdam uses to let tourist signs translate themselves into different languages. 

6. Sustainable travel

Smart cities have the potential to be much more sustainable than non-smart cities. Same goes for tourism. People don’t want to feel guilty about going on a trip. They want to still enjoy traveling, but limit the negative effects on climate as well. A very simple example of sustainable smart tourism is: if you do a city tour with an app, no flyers, paper maps, or other receipts and tickets are required; hence, you’re saving paper. Sustainable travel is a field where smart initiatives such as a smart waste collection or smart parking can come into play. More and more cities are creating mobility hubs outside of the city center with good public transport connections to the inner city and/or rental bike stations or rental e-scooters. Additionally, smart parking sensors are currently applied already to monitor and optimize the use of e-cars. And that’s only the very beginning…

7. Open data

Where Europe is mainly utilizing smart solutions in order to show innovation and create a competitive edge compared to other destinations, Australia takes a different approach and focuses on smart governance and specifically open data. A concrete example: Tourism Australia and Virgin Airlines partnered together to understand user journeys and assist in trip planning by sharing data such as destination interests in order to provide personalized airline deals and offers. 

Want to talk to a smart parking expert to see what they could do to transform your city into a smarter tourism destination? Book a demo by clicking the button below. 

Munich, February 19th 2021 - Cleverciti is proud to announce the publication of the Ultimate Smart City Parking Guide 2021. When you say smart city parking, you say Cleverciti. That is why we’ve decided to gather all the stats and put down our knowledge and share it with you through this essential Smart City Parking Guide. The complete guide can be downloaded here. 

Why an Ultimate Smart City Parking Guide?

Because smart cities are becoming both increasingly popular and important. Smart cities are the future and smart parking plays a vital part in the development of smart cities. It’s time to shed some light on the challenges that (smart) cities face and how smart parking can help conquer those.

What can you expect from the Ultimate Smart City Parking Guide 2021?

Our aim is to share our knowledge with regard to smart cities, smart parking and new mobility (smart city mobility), and to shine a light on the role smart parking solutions play to support your smart city design.

What’s inside the Ultimate Smart City Parking Guide 2021?

• A detailed analysis of the challenges that cities face today

• Real solutions that tackle these challenges

• The influence of climate change on the development of smart cities

• Insights into the future of smart cities in 2021 and beyond

• The role of smart parking in the development of smart cities

• Emission reduction due to smart parking

• Concrete use cases of smart parking solutions in smart cities

• Insights into the future of smart parking

Download the guide now.:

Here is a sneak preview:

At Cleverciti, we see a bright future. That outlook is directly in line with the impact we realize through reducing the search for parking, urban traffic and congestion to help eliminate the effects of climate change. As a company, we are always looking to the future to envision how we can create a positive change. We predict some smart trends for our environment, cities and the smart parking market in the next 12 months but we are excited to be part of a collaborative effort to address them.

Smart cities will rise

In 2019, there was a lot of buzz around the concept of “smart” or connected cities. And it wasn’t all talk. When we attended the Smart City Expo World Congress in November, we saw that there was an incredible amount of activity and interest from cities that want to incorporate intelligent technologies to build smarter environments. But there is a digital transformation that has to happen first. Smart city project ideas are broad, budgeting is complex, and sales cycles are long, but we predict that 2020 will be the year that more smart city projects will be deployed across the globe.

When a city aims to adopt smart trends, it’s often to improve the overall experience for visitors, residents and businesses alike. That’s precisely where smart parking fits in. Drivers that have a great experience finding parking are more likely to travel into the city or different neighborhoods to explore stores or restaurants. The residents that are walking the street can also breathe easier when cars aren’t circling the block looking for an open spot, producing needless emissions.

Parking will continue to be an uphill battle

We expect parking issues will get worse before smart parking trends get better. Although some areas are already implementing smart parking measures, most cities are experiencing significant population growth, which affects traffic, parking and air quality. Smart parking solutions help to alleviate these problems, but still won’t be deployed to the scale they should in 2020. As populations increase, causing more congestion and fewer available spots on average, the need for smart parking will become more apparent and residents will demand them — but it will take a few years for this convenience to catch on.

The difficulties associated with parking and urban congestion from increasing populations will get better in the future as more areas implement intelligent technology solutions. Additionally, these technologies can easily scale from that point on to further grow and change to fit the expanding needs of a business, city or other parking administration. While it may not be an immediate change, we are convinced there will be a very real, positive impact from smart parking at massive scale in nearly every city in the future.

The opportunity of ride-hailing services

The complexity of parking has propelled the popularity of ride-hailing services like Uber or Lyft. The use of these services is growing — a trend that will likely continue into 2020. However, while ride-hailing seems convenient for the user, it does not help the broader issues of traffic and urban congestion, excess emissions or parking availability. A driver still has to drive from their location to pick up the rider then take them to their destination — on average about 40% more distance driven. However, this transition to more ride-hailing presents opportunities for cities to repurpose existing parking assets to create mobility hubs and queuing areas. If ride-hailing services have real-time availability data of a nearby queuing area, they can improve their efficiency and reduce congestion and emissions.

Rich parking information also facilitates the use of public transportation. When smart parking is implemented at train stops, bus stations or parks and rides, users can know ahead of time which lots have space and which modes of transportation they can use. We have seen that when a driver knows in advance that they will be able to park at a station to use the train or bus, they are more likely to do so, consolidating the number of vehicles that traverse city streets.

Entering mainstream conversations

While consumers innately understand the parking challenges they face every day, awareness of smart parking solutions has been low in the general population. However, as consumers start to experience these smart trends firsthand in 2020, we expect consumers to start demanding them from their cities, shopping malls, office campuses, and other places they go each day.

No matter how these individual trends will shape next year and the years to come, Cleverciti is proud to be leading the way in helping cities to become smart by addressing parking issues, reducing vehicle congestion and cutting down on unnecessary emissions. We certainly see a bright future ahead.

It can be argued that technology moves at warp speed — and this old adage isn’t wrong. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a rise in some of the most innovative technology across multiple industries, bringing automation, intelligence and smart devices to the forefront of business. As we look forward to continued progression and development, there are a number of trends that will impact enterprise organizations around the globe.

Be prepared for what’s to come by taking note of these 9 trends:

1. Intelligent traffic and parking management. As cities, retailers, airports and more prioritize revolutionizing the parking experience, we’ll see more implementations of solutions that increase driver satisfaction by providing real-time communication and guidance.

2. Nontraditional advertising. The increased use of intelligent parking management solutions will also allow organizations to become more clever with their advertising, leveraging LED display screens that are multifaceted in their capabilities, including the ability to display marketing messages.

3. Data integration. We’ve seen that data is everywhere, and it will continue to proliferate nearly every aspect of the world, with a particular emphasis on city services, such as trash pickup and parking.

4. Digital transformation. The Internet of Things (IoT) will only continue to grow, with the opportunity to add more devices and services than ever before, creating the highest level of connectivity.

5. Artificial intelligence (AI). We’ve only just begun to see the possibilities AI brings to business leaders in nearly every market; as the technology becomes more mature, decision-making will be more intuitive and simplified based on unprecedented levels of data and insight.

6. Machine learning. When combined with edge computing, this application of AI enables streamlined and intricate data analysis, which has become critical in today’s fast-paced society and will be just as important moving forward.

7. Deep learning. Taking AI and machine learning to the next level, deep learning will allow organizations to leverage tools that make informed decisions at a moment’s notice.

8. Smart devices. From our phones to our appliances to our security systems, it’s become clear that smart devices are here to stay — and they’re only getting smarter. With cloud computing as a backbone, these devices will continue to connect through the IoT and transmit endless amounts of information between one another.

9. Network-enabled platforms. The ability of the aforementioned smart devices to speak to one another is paramount for optimal productivity, and this will help modernize and automate operations and processes in 2019.

The advancements we witnessed this year are not slowing down and we hope to see the most intelligent and efficient solutions in 2019 as systems become smarter and business goals become easier to achieve. We’re looking forward to a year full of progress and expansion.

It may sound like it, but deep tech is not the stuff of movies and science-fiction novels. Not anymore.

Since long we have been talking about high-end technologies or scientific techniques that would help revolutionise the world when used together or in conjunction with each other. These technologies are far more complex and bring radical changes to how we develop new things.

Experts and analysts have been trying to decipher when and where these technologies will make their impact and how long lasting their after-effects could be. As we approach the next decade, AI, IoT, Machine learning, Biotechnology, quantum computing and advanced robotics are shaping up to their full potential. They may take a long time and a lot of money to develop fully, but they can solve some very tough problems.

Swati Chaturvedi who coined the term ‘deep tech’ is the founder of a platform dedicated to angel investing called Propel(x). “We define deep technology as companies founded on a scientific discovery or meaningful engineering innovation. Most technology companies these days are built on business model innovation or offline to online business model transition using existing technology.” Deep tech is built from scratch, on something that does not really exist right now.

Here’s a look at few of the many companies developing applications using deep technology startups that can drastically change the way things function today.

• Biogenera works in the biotechnology driven pharmaceutical sector and is developing new DNA-based medicines for the treatment of specific illnesses such as tumours. It has developed the MyGenera platform to identify pathological and mutated genes and prevent diseases before the happen.

• Braincontrol has developed a technology that allows people to turn thought to action by using effective control systems. This technology helps people with physical disabilities to interact and connect with the world outside. Horus Technology works in the same field and has utilised deep tech to create a device that helps the blind ‘see’ the world around them with the help of robotics and AI.

• Empatica has developed a bracelet to help people with epilepsy by monitoring seizures. The bracelet detects the neural activity and body temperature of the wearer and processes this information to enable the user to steer clear of dangerous seizures.

Ecological applications

• Graphene-XT has developed a graphene suspension that produces high-grade graphene at lower costs with reduced environmental impact helping strengthen several industrial and construction based sectors.

• Greenrail has come up with a sustainable railway crossbar that is greener and smarter than its competitors. The cross has a lifespan exceeding 50 years, which is 20 more than its competitors and also incurs lesser vibration noise. It uses recycled materials and also generates energy from moving trains.

• Bio-on developed the world’s first biodegradable plastic and in 2017 presented a solution for bio-oil pollution restoration to eliminate hydrocarbons pollution.

• D-Orbit aims to deal with space junk by decommissioning and guiding the re-entry of satellites that have finished serving their time in space. It has developed a smart motor that is attached to satellite at the time of launch and removes it from the orbit in case of a major failure or end-of-life.

• Ribes Tech has an ultra-thin and flexible photovoltaic panel that turns sunlight into energy with ease and greater efficiency. A thin and flexible solar panel means it can be pasted on anything from roads and cars, to building walls and what not.

• Cleverciti uses AI to help drivers find free parking in cities, reducing air pollution in the process.

Daily-life Applications

• Trinckle 3D opens up the world of 3D printing to commoners by reducing barriers with the help of a cloud-based platform. This device will help making automation easier by speeding up the process of component manufacture and will also help cale up businesses by making it easier to duplicate parts and produce them on a large scale.

• Lexplore uses artificial intelligence to identify dyslexia in children. This Swedish company previously called Optolexia has combined automatic eye tracking camera techniques, Azure cloud-based services, reporting tools and data analysis and algorithm checkers to help in the early diagnosis of dyslexia. The statistical predictive model that they use to analyse large amounts of data provided by the camera has been powered by AI and helps tests all readers for signs of dyslexia.

• ApiOmat gifts companies the chance to mix their IT systems with mobile devices to efficiently create apps. Volkswagen launched their Digital Leadership app thanks to this company that aims to help connect businesses by going live with applications and IT related services faster and more efficiently than ever before. Their low cost and low code requiring tools helps designers create prototypes with ease which they can then beta-test and finalise significantly reducing development time.

• Roivant uses AI to help reduce the time and costs related to the drug development and manufacturing process. Founded in 2014 by Vivek Ramaswamy, the company raised $200 million dollars at a funding drive last year to expand their venture and spread to more parts of the US. The company is presently focusing its efforts on an Alzheimer’s drug that could help solve a lot of problems for several thousands of people around the world.

The Indian Picture

• Imaginate, Founder and CEO, Hemanth Satyanarayana, has the following to say about the impact of Deep tech, “Today, people generally refer to AI or machine learning as deep tech. Expanding the definition a little more, we have started integrating computer vision, image processing, AR/VR with the term. Deep tech is fundamentally a connection of different types of technologies to come up with a solution that has significant improvement over other products available in the market”.

• Ethx is one of the first Ethereum exchanges in India and was founded by Tarusha Mittal who believes that the platform provides a user-friendly, fast and secure solution to all cryptocurrency transaction related queries. It functions as a complete blockchain suite and provides users with the chance to contribute to a central network for tokens. Mittal predicts that Ethx will have over 5 million users by the end of 2019. Though a supreme court verdict on use of cryptocurrencies in India is still awaited.

• Pratilipi is the country’s largest online platform and bridges the gap between writers in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, Gujarati, and Kannada. It is a self-publishing platform for writers and works as a buying platform for the readers. It boasts of over 53,000 writers and 3.3 million plus readers. Shally Modi, the co-founder of Pratilipi, had the following to say about the company, “Pratilipi is a reading and writing platform for the next billion internet users who hail from the small towns and villages of India. It’s a storytelling platform for Indian languages.”

• Ossus Biorenewables is a Bengaluru-based startup that is developing clean, carbon-free, energy and recovery solutions. They use bH2 Plus to generate biohydrogen from industrial effluents and polluted water bodies. Founded by Suruchi Rao and Shanta Rao in 2017, the company is now partnering with oil and gas companies like ONGC and hopes to set up base in the US by 2020.

• Language learning startup, Multibhashi teaches English and other regional Indian languages to millions of users around the world. According to Anuradha Agarwal, the founder, “We are committed to teaching job-related English communication skills to the next billion users coming online. We fully realise that a task of this scale can only be accomplished through technology”. The app lets users connect with a tutor and get personalised services for the entire learning process.

You might also be interested in: AI in healthcare: Automated nurses, face recognition for disease detection and more

In its nascent phase, deep tech was a little difficult to understand due to its complexity. Startups deploying it could have a hard time finding an investor with the right amount of technical knowledge. But these startups have been successful at piquing interest and raising significant amounts of capital for investments. In fact, the year 2017 witnessed over $3.5bn being invested in this field with over 600 successful deals.

A study by Wavestone stated that Europe has been seeing considerable growth in investment with respect to deep-tech technologies, the projected growth exceeding three times the average growth since 2015. France is the global leader in terms of venture capitalist investments, and the UK leads in access to finance, followed by France.

Venture capital funds have contributed the most in Europe, like Kima Ventures, High-Tech Grunderfunds, Bpifrance, LocalGlobe, Horizon Ventures and Passion Capital. America too stayed well-represented thanks to Intel, Apple, Qualcomm, Microsoft Google, Cisco and Amazon. The most active European contributors were Siemens, Bosch, BNP Paribas and Swisscom.

EIT Digital is a European organisation consisting of a team of professionals who are passionate about digital innovation and entrepreneurship. It supports over 156 major European companies, start-ups and research institutes and has offices all over the world, including but not restricted to Berlin, Eindhoven, Helsinki, London, and Madrid. The EIT Digital Challenge, organised by them is a unique competition aimed at European deep tech companies.

Governments around the world are aiming to make their cities smart. In other words, they want to leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) applications to monitor and manage their cities more efficiently. But what is the solution to deploy millions of sensors, cameras and control technologies across sprawling metropolises? The answer is street lighting, the largest network of powered devices across the world.

In the latest report from Counterpoint Research’s IoT service, they show how smart street lighting can form the IoT backbone for smart cities. They showcase the business opportunities for both vendors and cities by going through case studies, existing technologies and assessing the challenges.

Counterpoint Research estimates that less than 18% of the world’s 350 million street lights are LED, with fewer than 2% connected, offering vendors tremendous growth opportunities. Discussing the findings, Neil Shah, Research Director at Counterpoint Research says, “We expect 15% of global street lights to be connected by 2023. This would mean at least 50 million more street lights will be connected creating a large opportunity for companies like Huawei, Telena, Signify and others. A connected street lighting network, complete with sensors and control technologies, can form the backbone for a city-wide network capable of acquiring data, delivering information from millions of devices (from rubbish bins to autonomous vehicles), and monitoring everything from crime to traffic and even the weather.”

Not only can smart street lighting help in monitoring key aspects of a city, it can also generate additional revenues for the city administration. For example, cities can rent out lamp post-mounted digital signage spaces for advertising. It is a model that has proven successful by LinkNYC which is expected to generate over US$1 billion in advertising revenues in its first 10 years of operation.

Gareth Owen, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research adds, “Business cases for smart street lighting networks are still being developed. However, they offer a large potential for cities to generate additional revenue streams. Smart lighting poles could be leased out as Wi-Fi hotspots, 4G/5G base stations, digital signages, and many other such uses. The professional lighting industry is already embracing IoT and will play a significant role in transforming the street lighting network into a major backbone for IoT.”

Another benefit of a smart street lighting network with LEDs lies in energy and operational cost savings. By deploying smart street light projects, Los Angeles and Oslo have seen energy savings of 63% and 62%, respectively. Similarly, smart street lights have helped Saudi Arabia save 50% of its power costs. While operational cost savings depend on the costs the operator currently incurs to maintain its lights, smart street lighting with LEDs offer benefits such as longer lifetime, remote monitoring and management allowing for switching off, or dimming the lights when required, predictive maintenance, and automatic outage detection. These benefits have already started to change the outlook of cities for selecting vendors.

Gareth Owen goes on to explain, “We expect 45% of the global street lighting network will have LEDs by 2023. As smart lighting networks are deployed, cities are moving away from traditional tendering methods in favor of a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) system which changes the business model from a high CAPEX outlay along with OPEX to a pure OPEX solution. Several smart lighting companies are already offering Lighting-as-a-Service (LaaS) business models in which customers pay per lux, i.e. on a usage basis, rather than simply paying for devices and a standard managed service.”

However, as with any new technology there are hurdles. “While the use of smart lighting infrastructure as a technological foundation for a smart city is a very promising prospect, a few challenges must first be overcome. Business models need to be adapted further to include the value of all supported services and not just lighting. Further, issues on connectivity, operational barriers, security issues, ownership challenges and lastly, infrastructure challenges need to be resolved,” Owen adds.

Companies mentioned in this report include Huawei, Cisco, Telena, Signify, Itron, Cleverciti, Echelon Corp., Rongwen, Current (powered by GE), Flashnet, Sensus, gridComm, DimOnOff, Trilliant, Acuity, Ubicquia, Tvilight, Enlighted, AT&T, Verizon, Sansi Technology, ZTE, Philips and Ruchi Telecom.

The report is available for subscribing clients and for purchase on Counterpoint’s research portal. Please feel free to reach out to press@counterpointresearch.com for further questions regarding their in-depth latest research, insights or press enquiries.

About Counterpoint Technology Market Research

Counterpoint Technology Market Research is a global research firm specializing in Technology products in the TMT industry. It services major technology firms and financial firms with a mix of monthly reports, customized projects and detailed analysis of the mobile and technology markets. Its key analysts are experts in the industry with an average tenure of 13 years in high-tech industries.