Tourism Tasmania
Encouraging Exploration with the Discover Tasmania App
Key results
app downloads since launch reflecting strong user adoption
of visitors reported that the app inspired them to explore unplanned activities, encouraging spontaneous travel.
personalised user trips using the app’s intuitive itinerary planning features.
of users go on to click through to an operator website
The challenge
When asked to picture Tasmania, those who have yet to visit might envision lush landscapes, fascinating wildlife, or rich cultural experiences. However, stories from those who've journeyed there often shine a light on the real treasures—the hidden gems, off-the-beaten-path adventures, and genuine encounters to be found in charming small towns.
With this vision in mind, Tourism Tasmania briefed us to create the Discover Tasmania app to act as the official, free travel guide to Tasmania – encouraging visitors to go beyond the well-trodden tracks and discover local treasures. The challenge lay in balancing utility with spontaneity, providing travellers with personalised on-the-ground recommendations to enhance their stay and drive engagement with local businesses, while promoting freedom to explore the island.
The goal
To create a tool that makes it easy for travellers to find the things they’re looking for on their Tasmanian holiday, and sidestep the things that don’t interest them by:
- Serving as a pocked-sized travel guide sharing insider tips and local recommendations based tailored to users' locations
- Offering real-time updates including events, experiences, accommodation, landmarks, cafés, distilleries, restaurants… and even the occasional mini goat farm
- Inspiring regional travel with customisable road-trips and itineraries
- Helping visitors build, edit and share personalised Tasmanian holiday experiences full of great things to do, places to see and people to meet along the way, with the app’s ‘Trip Planner’ function
- Providing a connected experience with the Discover Tasmania site allowing favourites and trips to be accessed cross-platform with a Discover Tasmania account
- Delivering a seamless on-ground experience, helping visitors get off their phone and make the most of every moment
- Providing access to most of the app’s features even users are offline or out of range.
- Identifying useful general services like car parks, toilets, visitor information centres, playgrounds and more
The solution
Qualitative app testing revealed perceptions of the app were positive among visitors to Tasmania with a "visually engaging design that delivers a more curated offering than a generic Google search, showcasing the best of what’s available in Tasmania." - Kantar User Testing Report 2023
“It’s great to use… In Google, you need to have more knowledge of the place to know what to type in... This is more of an exploring app when you don’t know much about the area. It prompts you to discover new places you could see.
It highlights places you wouldn't necessarily be looking for; you could miss them while you were here if you didn’t know about it. I found a diving tour while I was looking at the trip planner, which really got my attention – I wouldn't have found that in Google because I wasn’t looking for it.”
– Visitor to Tasmania, user testing December 2022
In addition to enhancing the visitor experience, the app has played a crucial role in Tourism Tasmania’s digital transformation, delivering value to industry partners. By integrating with the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW), the app lists over 7,500 operator businesses which can be added to trips, favourites lists and explored further with links off to operator sites, creating over 110,000 leads to businesses within the first 12 months.
The tech stack
The Discover Tasmania app was built using Flutter, Google’s open-source SDK enabling us to use one codebase for both iOS and Android apps. Flutter’s widget-based approach allows us build reusable UI components and customisations creating efficiencies by simplifying the development process.
Central to the app’s effectiveness is the use of BlueDot, a geo-tracking technology, which delivers precise location-based messaging while travellers are out and about exploring. BlueDot can determine when a user has entered or left a pre-defined geographical area and serve them a timely notification not to miss things to see and do. These areas can be as small as specific buildings or as large as a city or National Park and include locations such as Launceston, Salamanca Markets, Bruny Island and Cradle Mountain.
All notifications can be updated, activated and stored in the Optimizely CDP with Firebase used to schedule and push notifications to individual devices – like a monthly reminder to check out Salamanca Markets when in Hobart, or time-based reminders not to miss getting a parks pass when entering a National Park.
This diverse tech stack allows for greater flexibility and scalability as the app grows so we can evolve and add features based on the changing interests and needs of visitors and industry partners.
OUR CRAFT
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Encouraging Exploration with
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incredible team
Acknowledgement of Country
We respectfully acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation and the Muwinina as the Traditional Owners of the lands on which our workplaces stand to date and extend this respect to all First Nations peoples, including Elders past, present and emerging.
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Level 2, 100 Harris Street,
Pyrmont, NSW 2009
+61 2 9339 4333
hello@orchard.com.au
Hobart
107 Murray Street,
Hobart, TAS 7000
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200 Broadway 3rd Floor,
New York, NY 10038
