Introduced with a bit of fuss and immediately awarded an ADAC prize, the excursion sticker Upper Bavaria has not yet met all expectations.
District - The municipal tourism company Alpenregion Tegernsee Schliersee (ATS) fills the ticker for the Miesbach district.
And the responsible product developer admits: The introduction of the tool may have come a little early.
Bavaria's Minister of Economic Affairs and Tourism Hubert Aiwanger (FW) recently made a personal guest appearance in Feldafing (Starnberg district) - to get an idea of how visitors are managed (we reported in the Bavaria section).
He underlined the importance of the technology and promised 30 million euros in funding for its expansion.
The funds are to flow into sensor technology, and this is urgently needed in the Miesbach district so that the ticker really brings something.
ATS developer: "The platform is not quite finished yet" - criticism of the early start of the ticker
However, the ATS is not inactive, as Tim Coldewey explains.
The product developer who works for ATS says that digital visitor management in the Miesbach district is "an important and successful, but at the moment still somewhat ungrateful work".
Coldewey editorially fills the excursion sticker.
With its mountain sports report, which appears at the weekend, and hand-typed information on traffic, alternative excursion destinations and tips for outsiders, the platform is very popular. "The district of Miesbach currently has the highest number of hits in the Upper Bavaria-wide excursion ticker," says Coldewey.
But: “The platform is not quite finished yet.” Bayern Tourismus Marketing GmbH replaced the ATS own ticker in March of this year.
“The new platform offers many possibilities, but in my opinion it came a little too early,” says the ATS employee.
He suspects political motives behind the quick start - “perhaps because tourist regions were highly frequented in the March lockdown and quick remedial action was needed”.
The platform has been successively reprogrammed to this day.
"Actually, it is designed for weather data, sensors and automated traffic data."
But the technology that is supposed to feed the portal with data is missing.
In mid-May, the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs decided to “promote measures for the collection, processing and provision of real-time utilization data for visitor management”.
Aiwanger promises 30 million euros in funding - but the technology is still missing five months after the start of the ticker
Coldewey explains: “We have already submitted funding applications.” For example, along the B 318 between Holzkirchen and Tegernsee, the ATS wants to count the traffic electronically as part of the “Smart Tourism Region” funding project.
This is how the rush to the valley could be measured.
But the money has not yet flowed.
Coldewey: "That's why the ticker is still manual work for us."
He and his colleagues would enter closures and make predictions about the traffic and parking situation.
The construction sites in Hausham and Schliersee do not appear in the ticker.
The forecast data used by the ATS comes from the evaluation of mobile network data, supplemented by weather data.
“The next step will be to make codes available to local partners such as mountain railways and baths.” The operators could then transmit the occupancy rate (“full, medium, empty”) to the ATS via a scan.
“The extensive attention to detail, of course, leaves a lot to be desired.” The Coldewey provides some remedy by advertising tours in less frequented locations.
"For example in Holzkirchen at the geological trail there is usually still air."
The ATS tip to prepare a plan B as an excursionist is seldom accepted. Without a second destination in mind, visitors would often head to their desired location for hours. “It's a shame that many people think so one-dimensionally.” In the near future, the excursion sticker will gradually improve - “and hopefully more digital once the funding has been released”. Coldewey hopes for sensor data from autumn this year. "But that's a rough estimate."
(Dak / nap)