Unusual and unknown places have more social networks interactions. Visitors are aware of the information to become savvy, avoid queues and discover unusual and unknown places. The target was reached by influencer marketing campaign, to raise awareness of FeelFlorence App. Sentiment analysis was implemented too and coupled with tools, data, sensors. The solutions serve decision and policy makers also far beyond the tourism purposes (safety, security et al.). Final achievement the tight cooperation among the stakeholders responsible for the different aspects of the testing. Florence already had Wi-Fi access points data which gave decision makers an idea of how many people were at different sites at the same time. Building from the existing, Feel Florence Web App and App are now true Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, integrating new elaborated Wi-Fi access points data and thermal cameras ones, providing detailed information for visitors to live at their best the places they want to visit. Data are collected in real time, processed, and analyzed and finally returned to users in a meaningful way, meaning with the term users, decision makers, citizens and tourists, all by means of the Feel Florence App.

The key to success was not reinventing but using existing “items” and complementing with new features and having the relevant stakeholders cooperating. Stakeholders brought the tourism competences and allowed averting barriers in terms of tools implementation and taking action. The synergy was due to the innovation ecosystem protocol. The 3 open data territorial providers were involved and worked together on the project platform developed by the University of Florence, named DisitLab. Thanks to big open/smart/data and different tools and methodologies that were implemented, overflows monitoring was improved and Florence unusual/unknown sites experienced higher engagement and interactions with users on social media, which provides evidence that those sites are becoming better-known and the overall Florence site is empowering visitors to make smarter decisions when visiting the city and the UNESCO area, by virtuously orienting their behaviors. The implemented solutions also allowed the destination to reach its target audience and focus on a more surgical marketing and laid the ground for analyzing and monitoring the excursionist, i.e., city visitors staying a day and often quite hard to track, monitor and assess. Find out more here.