Most tourism subjects fail to develop their own digital guides because they underestimate the cost of developing and maintaining a digital guide solution that meets the expectations of a modern traveler. One of the rare successful destination apps is Visit London. The city of London however spent over €3M developing and maintaining the app for 5 years. Most destinations or SMEs don’t have nearly such budgets. They often get public funding to reinvent the wheel and develop something for €100k-€500 that does not work well. Furthermore, tourists are willing to install a dedicated app for London but are less likely to visit a small town. Developing any technology is completely out of question for the smallest / rural destinations / authentic off-the-beaten-path places that need promoting the most.

SmartGuide pledges to provide cutting-edge technology for digital travel guides to destinations and SMEs ready-made, without the need for any IT development. These subjects can focus on their core – preparing the most engaging content about the places they promote. 

SmartGuide pledges to offer such technology with the essential functions (that cost over €500k to develop and suffices to publish a operate a modern digital guide) free of charge to any tourism guide creator in any destination that meet the content quality criteria to democratize the access to modern digital guiding technology. These guides are provided for free or for fee to the tourists, as decided by the guide creator