THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In an effort to ease travel planning for holidaymakers, Kerala Tourism on Wednesday introduced an innovative tool, a Quick Response (QR) Code-aided tourism search, which makes it easier for travellers to get information about tourist destinations on the department’s official website.
Launching the facility, Tourism Minister A P Anil Kumar said it is the first such initiative of its kind in India. “This technology will enable visitors to Kerala to overcome difficulties in getting to their destinations. They will be able to not just get there, but know many interesting things about the place without any external help,” he said.
The new facility has been rolled out as smartphones have started playing a key role in travel planning because of the high degree of convenience and affordable cost. QR Code-aided tourism search optimises the interactive features of the www.keralatourism.org site. “Kerala Tourism has already established hundreds of QR-coded sign boards across the state. The traveller can scan the QR code using a smartphone or a tab which has a QR code reader. The QR code will also be carried on tourism-related magazines and brochures,” Additional Director (General), Kerala Tourism, Anupama T V said.
“The traveller can select the radius of the location which he wishes to know about. The predetermined distance varies from two to 50 km,” she said.
A total of 1,200 geotagged photos from various parts of Kerala, with around 75 photographs from each district, have been uploaded on the website of Kerala Tourism. This will help the travellers get visual information on subjects of interest. In order to enhance the data available on the QR code, Kerala Tourism envisions a massive collection of geotagged images from across the state and is looking forward to participation by the people in expanding this database. This will be made possible through a new interface to upload photos directly from mobiles to the website of Kerala Tourism.
“Geotagged photographs with location information of possible tourism destinations can be uploaded to the tourism website by the tourist using a smartphone, which will be verified by Kerala Tourism before including in the QR Code-aided tourism search,” Anupama said.