Alba Iulia city used our proximity platform Zoniz as the base for their app e-alba iulia, in order to drive citizen engagement and promote tourism. e-alba iulia is a white label solution of Zoniz, with a re-branded look and feel. The collaboration started as part of the Alba Iulia Smart City pilot project, coordinated by Orange. This project aims to digitize and develop the city.
Context and Objectives
Alba Iulia is a city in Romania with a citadel of great historical significance, Alba Carolina. After the restoration of the citadel in 2013, the city became an appealing attraction to tourists, which also meant increased potential for businesses. Consequently, in the following years, there was an unprecedented increase in the number of inhabitants. The municipality started the Alba Iulia Smart City pilot project in search of smart solutions, for further development of the city. e-alba iulia is part of this project and it is both a virtual guide for tourists and a useful instrument for e-government.
The Alba Iulia municipality’s main objective was to promote the city’s tourist attractions and offer information about the points of interest. The next step was to use the platform to send messages to citizens about events and important news.
Implementation and Campaigns
By delivering a white label solution, we provided Zoniz platform for Alba Iulia administration and a mobile app for citizens and tourists. In order to deliver relevant content to the right location, we have placed 400 beacons throughout the city. The beacons are set from the platform when campaigns are being created. When entering the beacon’s range, people get notifications about the content they have received.
The platforms allows different types of engagement campaigns, like info, video, events and polls. The municipality of Alba Iulia uses them to send content with useful information about current or future city projects, business collaborations, traffic restrictions in the city, free available EU courses for citizens and so on. Citizens get up-to-date with everything happening in the city through the e-alba iulia mobile app.
Tourists can also enjoy the content about Alba Carolina citadel and other attractions or historical buildings. They can access in-app guide tours and through these campaigns they can explore the city.
Results
The municipality and local institutions used the reports generated by the platform to improve how they communicate and interact with people.
In the trial phase of this project (October 2018 – February 2019) there were 113 campaigns implemented, which included: 12 events, 2 polls, 54 info campaigns for citizens, and 45 more info campaigns directed towards tourism.
Our collaboration with Alba Iulia municipality continues by releasing an upgraded version of the app in November 2019. The upgraded e-alba iulia app will have a new look and improved features, which include an all-new events calendar, campaigns ordered by category and bilingual content. The next step will be to involve businesses to add content on the app.
Zoniz offers a great smart city solution for municipalities who want to communicate with both citizens and tourists in a relevant way. They can use the platform to deliver the information in the right place, at the right time and they also have a lot of options for engagement. They can also involve other businesses and organizations to participate and create a connected city.
