University of Applied Sciences develops tourism app for Davos

A smartphone app from the University of Applied Sciences Graubünden (FHGR) used augmented reality to show visitors the sights as they explore Davos. A video demonstrates how the Augmented Swiss Heritage app has gathered around 30 individual situations from certain walking routes and overlays animated explanations on them. The project has now been presented at the Digital Competence Circle of discover.swiss, the platform for digital transformation in tourism.

In a press release, project lead Simonne Bosiers, a lecturer at the FHGR Institute for Multimedia Production, states that FHGR wanted to “explicitly create a tourism product” for technology-loving members of the public. According to FHGR, this is novel because it makes available content that is not widely known or accessible and presents these virtual subjects audiovisually in a composition with reality.

For instance, when individuals with the app go to the Kirchner Museum Davos and stand in front of the bed carved for Erna Schilling by the painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, the app brings a portrait of Erna to life and shows her describing the bed. Kirchner spent the final 20 years of his life in Davos.

The museum has partnered with FHGR for this project, along with the Heimatmuseum Davos and the tourism promoter Destination Davos Klosters. FHGR was responsible for the content while augmented reality specialists at Agentur Afca.ag from Zollikofen in the canton of Bern developed the software. Samuel Rosenast, Head of Communications & Content Destination Davos Klosters, commented: “With this, culture and history are now able to be experienced, providing us with huge added value.”