The Project

Project Summary

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An European, multiplatform, multi-lingual interactive leisure guide network

The project

MOBIGUIDING aims at building a European, multi-platform, multi-lingual interactive leisure guide network, available on fixed Internet and mobile devices, featuring the most developed multimedia technology. It is based in:

The value chain

The value chain of the industry can be represented as follows :

At the moment, we consider that this chain does not work because the critical processes do not exist, which prevent the players from benefits such as :

- Events organisers and leisure venue managers do not really believe in the Internet and mobile tools as publishing and sales tools which could contribute to increase their revenue ; moreover, they find no short-term interest in giving input to content providers via a standardized data entry processes; this is because no multimedia platform currently exists which would give them broad access to their public. Feeding their Internet website with information that will not be widely available is useless.

- Local leisure content is very fragmented : at a local level, every public entity (local authority, tourist offices...) and many private companies (guides, tourism companies,...) produce their own content, the display of which is often limited to their own Website and in a very small number of languages. This production is considered as costly by these entities, resulting in poor quality and updating.

- National cityguides face quite the same problem : either they rely on communication revenues (advertising, website sales) or on content sales revenues. In the first case, their profitability – and therefore the quality of their content – is highly dependent from the Internet advertising market. Yet, they face prospects – tourism and travel companies or telecom carriers – who increasingly need a multinational and multilingual content, and who are ready to pay for the use of it; but the national cityguides often do not have the financial ability to invest in the creation of this content.

- Localisation companies do not really benefit from the development of the industry, because of the lack of multilinguism mentioned above.

- Telecom operators cannot really test the business models and the kind of content that will shape the development of the 3G mobile phones on a European scale, because they can not find at a moderate cost the appropriate content. The risk of having no specific content, on a large scale, to develop the use of 3rd generation licences is high.

- For all those reasons, the end-user can not often find easily, in a standardized and high quality format, updated information available on any support, in his/her own language, about the leisure places and activities he/she can have in his/her home countries or when travelling.

In short, the leisure information process is not client-oriented, which prevents it from being profitable, and which makes it impossible to develop genuine awareness of leisure activities from one European country to the next.

How will MOBIGUIDING shape the industry’s future?

In a “post-MOBIGUIDING” world, the content integrator will share the revenue coming from the sales of content with the local partners who fed the content in the common system. Therefore, they will be strongly induced to make the content as comprehensive as possible, which will reinforce the chances of this content to be sold widely. Before being integrated in the platform, any new content will have to be “validated” by the national partner. The translation and localisation of the content will depend on the interest of this content for other countries. A large part of this translation will rely on automatic engines. The vocalisation of this content will also be done, according to a selection process.

The virtuous circle

The main impact of the project will be to replace the existing (see above) vicious circle by a virtuous one, thus enabling the creation of value.

The Content integrator will be able to gather the content at a European level, because of the creation of a partner Network across the Union. Therefore, it will be able to assess the value of this content, reaching a critical mass that will make it very attractive for potential clients : mobile phone operators, but also tourism companies, leisure oriented websites.... The revenue linked to these sales will increase with the level of use by mobile phone subscribers. This revenue will be shared with the content producers, on a basis depending on their size and country : this will be determined either by the audience generated by the content produced, or the number of content unities published.

Therefore, content producers, whoever they are (local guides, event organisers, leisure venue managers, tourist offices) will find a financial interest in feeding the system with information. A user-friendly interface will be available for them to compute their information in a standardised and comprehensive manner. It will result in a far more developed sharing of the information on the same platform. The 3G mobile phone features will enable content producers to present the places and events using the most developed technology. Event organisers, for example, will be able to sell, thanks to m-commerce, to users long before they enter their country. Users will be able to find a restaurant or hotel as close as possible from the place in which they are, thanks to the fully geolocalised database.

Moreover, content providers will benefit from the implicit advertising generated by publishing their content: an advantage on their competitors in terms of image marketing. On a national level, the national partner will have the key role of making editorial choices, driving national publishing and translating rules and ensuring they are respected, in order to keep the content homogenous and of an appropriate quality. Publishing and translating standard rules will be defined on a European level, but will have to be localised.

The language industry will benefit from this network which will considerably increase the volume of content to translate in this field. The balance between languages will be better than today : english will be common, but if it appears necessary to have Italian cultural events presented in Swedish because of the important touristic flow between these countries, this will be done. The system will count the number of words translated and therefore allow the calculation of the amount due to the translating company. The translated content will be automatically entered into the system. It is important to mention that standardised, basic informations (address, opening hours, etc...) will be 100% machine translated thanks to an index incorporated in the content management software. Regarding the description of places and events, part of the project will consist in developing the Dictionaries and memories which will support an automatic translation of these short texts.