During this special summer season, vacations in one’s own country are more popular than they have been for a long time. While the resulting rush of vacation seekers has become a major challenge for the bavarian tourist industry, it also brings with it a wealth of opportunities. The demand for digital solutions has never been so great. A sustainable, forward-looking tourist industry in Bavaria requires innovative digital solutions. To address this need, software solutions are already being developed within the framework of the BayernCloud research project.
Model region Allgäu: one-click access to all information
Allgäu, the first region to be tested in the BayernCloud, provides a clear illustration of what these solutions might look like in the case of the tourism industry. Apart from fortiss, participants in the three-year project, which has been underway since 2018, include Allgäu GmbH, Kempten University, the Bavarian State Ministry for Economic Affairs, State Development and Energy and BAYERN TOURISMUS Marketing GmbH. Although the project is still being treated as a research activity, concrete examples reveal how this vision can help to advance tourism in the region.
Bavaria’s Minister for Economic Affairs, Hubert Aiwanger, also underscores the relevance of this issue:
“The BayernCloud tourism will one day serve as a data hub for tourism marketing and destination management by connecting the industry’s players with one another and providing them practical and relevant sources of information in real-time. The exchange of data will be simplified since information from the provider, such as the tour operator, has to be entered only once and will then automatically appear in real-time on the tourism information websites or event calendars from other providers.”
BayernCloud performs pioneering work for the tourism industry
The cloud-based data platform will be designed under the leadership of fortiss, the research institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems. As a research institute, fortiss does not develop market-ready solutions. As a result, the platform does not represent an end application or app. Summarizing the project, Norman Schaffer from fortiss says, “The research will result in a reference architecture; a sort of blueprint for creating a backend infrastructure, which can be centrally bundled, categorized and made available so that it can be used by apps and other tools such as widgets.” In many cases, the data first has to be digitalized.
In this case the BayernCloud will once again carry out pioneering work and promote the sustainability of the bavarian tourism industry and others. The development of a market-ready solution will be left up to the companies. With the BayernCloud, they will nevertheless enjoy access to a wide variety and multitude of data and be able to generate completely new combinations and fields of applications, including suitable applications, depending on their entrepreneurial creativity. As a result, small-to-medium enterprises can benefit from sustainable, user-friendly digital solutions that will help them retrieve and provide information like a “data navigation system.”
Developing future solutions for other industries
Prof. Dr. Helmut Krcmar, Senior Research Fellow at fortiss, underscores how the BayernCloud can be used in different industries and business sectors: “BayernCloud will provide small-to-medium enterprises with information and offer them the opportunity to exchange data. In many cases, data is already available, but stored in a decentralized and inaccessible manner. Tourism will serve as the first field of application. Our flexible system structure and the use of open source technologies will create a digital modular system that can of course be ported over to other industries and sectors as well.”
