QR code and NFC technology to guide tourists around The Rocks in Sydney

QR code and NFC- guide tourists

QR code and NFC- guide tourists

The New South Wales Government is backing a smartphone based walking tour.

The New South Wales Government in Australia is backing an interactive walking tour for smartphone owners using QR code and NFC contactless technology.

Tourists using the quick response codes will be guided through 37 of The Rocks’ historic sites.

Sydney’s oldest district, The Rocks, receives a significant amount of tourism every year, and the government of New South Wales supported the development of the interactive tours to help to enhance the experience and make it more informative than any physical plaques or signage would allow.

The Rocks now feature a QR code at each of the 37 locations.

Each can each be scanned, in addition to the NFC tags that can be tapped, depending on the technology available in the particular mobile device being used.

According to the New South Wales deputy premier, Andrew Stoner, who is also the trade and investment minister, “With just a simple tap of their mobile phone, visitors will be taken on a journey through laneways of The Rocks, along cobblestone streets and up and down sandstone steps to reveal fascinating stories of families, friends, convicts and colonists.”

He added that by including technology that uses near field communications as well as the quick response codes, it will provide visitors to the district with access to a tremendous amount of information, and will provide them with an enhanced interactive experience through the self guided tours of everyone from the first European settlers all the way back to the Aboriginal Cadigal people, in a way that has never before been possible.

This will provide an entirely new level of experience for the 14 million tourists who make their way through the historical district of The Rocks, to make it much richer, and provide them with a reason to spend more time in each of the areas and at each of the sites.

Stoner also added that this is only the beginning of a much broader plan to add the use of mobile technology to The Rocks, as they intend to add multilingual, audio, and video capabilities to the QR code and NFC tags, so that the tourist experience will continue to improve.

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