Municipal Police will have an APP to help tourists

The City Council celebrated with Turismo de Portugal - Escola de Hotelaria e Turismo do Porto a cooperation protocol to develop the "Formação + Próxima" program and implementing measures that promote the knowledge and qualification of the tourism sector and transversal to tourism activity.

In this context, the first training action was carried out, aimed at agents of the Municipal Police (PM), to train them with technical knowledge to assist those who visit us. In addition, the need to create an innovative solution, using a mobile application, was diagnosed, which facilitates agents to communicate with tourists, in different languages, contributing to a better tourist experience.

The objective of creating an APP is for it to support PM agents in their interaction with tourists and provide, in real-time, various features, such as voice translation, reaching a certain tourism resource (on foot, metro, bus), new routes, itineraries and passing information from the agent to the tourist, through a QR Code.

Create innovative solutions for the market

The development of the APP concept results from a partnership with the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) - Project Management Laboratory (LGP). This is an experimentation centre, which involves professors from the faculties of Engineering (FEUP), Economics (FEP) and Fine Arts (FBAUP), and which aims to create innovative solutions for the market, in a multidisciplinary learning context, where master's students practice project management and apply knowledge from different areas of knowledge.

For the Councillor for Tourism and Internationalization, in the current context, "where the technological aspect intervenes directly in the quality of the travel experience, it is essential that destinations bet on innovative products and services that interact in real-time with visitors".

"In this sense, this mobile application, which had its genesis in a partnership work with the Project Management Laboratory and the Master's Degree in Multimedia of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, has the purpose of supporting Municipal Police agents in interacting with the visitor, simplifying access to information and positively impacting the quality of the experience in the destination", added Catarina Santos Cunha.

The creation of an APP will allow its users (PM agents) to increase their knowledge and skills, increase their aptitude for the information provided and contribute to a high-quality tourist experience. The mobile application will have simultaneous translation in several languages of the requested information, will provide requested and translated information in the visitor's language, in real-time, and will provide useful and relevant information to provide a more capable response.