Bethlehem is the birthplace of Jesus Christ, according to the Gospels and the Christian tradition and contemporarily the hometown of King David. Last but not least, Bethlehem is an important city from the cultural and artistic viewpoints, at international level, with over one million visitors a year. The main driver of its tourism is its past. Tourism is the most significant resource for the local economy of this small town and its 25,000 inhabitants.
Now Bethlehem will have a new tool to better welcome and serve its incoming tourists very day: the innovative electronic tourist guidebook which was designed and developed in Trentino.
The project was conceived by the University of Trento, through its spin-off OKKAM s.r.l. in close cooperation with the Sina Institute of the Birzeit University and CCHP, the Centre for the Cultural Heritage Protection.
The electronic guidebook is based on the ObjectLinks platform, developed by OKKAM s.r.l., thanks to which users are able to effectively use the QR codes (or any similar proximity sensors, like NFC and RFID) on their smart phones and tablets, thus improving the experience of tourists who visit Palestine and enhancing the cultural heritage of Bethlehem.
Tourists strolling around in the ancient districts of the town may read the QR code with their smart phones and automatically listen to the audio guide in their native language, watch videos and read more information. At the same time the Cultural Heritage Board of Bethlehem may edit or add contents without ever changing the QR codes already placed around in the city.
The initiative involves eight important historical and cultural sites of the city, including the Church of the Nativity, Manger Square and Star Street.
Since its first use, the system has already been used by hundreds of local and foreign tourists visiting Bethlehem, who appreciated its usability, easy navigation and the completeness of the numerous multilingual contents.
Paolo Bouquet explained “Being the President of OKKAM s.r.l. and a professor at the University of Trento I am very proud of my participation in this project, because I hope it will provide a small contribution towards the normalization of the extremely tens and uncertain situation of the Middle East. The system we have developed allows managing the contents in an easy and dynamic way, without replacing the QR code. Further, it allows obtaining very precise statistical data on the use of QR codes and the choices of the users. Finally, the system does not require any specific application to be downloaded. Any QR reading application is sufficient”.
Mustafa Jarrar, Director of the Sina Institute of the Birzeit University underlined that “The QR code scanning systems have been already applied in various sectors. However, the use of this kind of technology in a multimedia tourist guidebook system combined with the use of the ObjectLinks platform is innovative at global level: the local tourist boards can build and manage the guidebook in an easy and effective way, at a very low cost”. “The initiative is the result of the cooperation with the University of Trento and and its spin off OKKAM s.r.l.”
The initiative was praised also by the Palestinian vice Minister of Tourism and Ancient Times Hamadan Taka, who called upon a wider use of the service applying it to other touristic sites of Palestine. The project is in line with the Ministry’s project for the digitalization and documentation of the Palestine stories and history, through the use of modern technologies. This is a decisive factor for the enrichment of the industry of tourism in Palestine.
The initiative was developed within the framework of the SIERA project, which was co-financed by the 7th EU Framework Programme, which aims at promoting the research cooperation with experts coming from all over the world, in the field of technology for multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing. The Lead Partner of the project is SINA the Institute of the Birzeit University di Ramallah, which coordinates the University of Trento, the University of Milan Bicocca, the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.