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The Green Tour by Itba Arg

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Pitch

Looking for a new adventure? Experience a tour ride in bicycle with a local guide and discover new places in a healthy and sustainable way. 


Description

Summary

The green tour is a platform developed by students as a project oriented to connect tourists with local guides providing an unique experience travelling around the city on a bicycle tour. Our gold is to offer a more natural and social adventure when visiting new touristic places.

Bicycle rides, besides being one of the most growing types of outdoor recreation, are one way to fight against climate change. This type of transportation reduces soil and air pollution and, at the same time, minimize water consumption, it also saves on fuel and combustible that would have been used on car and bus tours, avoiding CO2 emission.

The other key benefit is social, bringing people together and enabling locals to provide their knowledge of the city helping micro economy around tourism and providing a deeper understanding of the regional culture


What concrete idea do you propose?

The proposal requires a platform where locals register as guides, providing some personal information and details about the tour they offer and tourists that are interested to take the trip can contact them and set up a meeting. The site will offer a search bar where users can navigate through the tours to choose the one that best fits for them. It will also offer a map to check the route of the tour and make suggestions if they need it. After the tour has ended the user can rate the guide on the website and comment about their experience.

Around the city there will be distributed some stations marked as points of interest equipped with bicycles where people can rest and where locals and tourist will meet to start or end tours. This stations will have an identification system to lock and unlock the vehicles parked there with an application available for smartphones. 

The main flow of the application as a local is to register and login with their account into the website, post the tours they offer, after a tourist contacted them and set up a meeting they will go to the station marked as start of the tour and travel with the user following the route established. The flow of the application as a tourist will go as follows: register and login into their account, look for a tour that best fits their needs, contact the guide of the tour and set up a meeting, go to the designated point to start the tour, after the tour had ended they will have the chance to rate and comment about the tour and the guide on the application.


Who will take these actions?

This actions will be taken by three main groups:

  • Locals: Habitants of touristic cities that offer they services as tour guide showing visitors the arounds with a especial route they prepare to give a personalized experience immersing travelers in the local life.
     
  • Trippers: People who is visiting places for pleasure, looking for new adventures and that wanna know more about the places and connect with the local community and have a deeper understanding of they culture.
     
  • Governments and media: Support of local administration and media is important for the diffusion of the tour so people that visit this places know about this tours and take into account as an option to discover the city. 

It is important to highlight that difusion about the project on airlines and other types of transportations would be a huge help for the project.


Impact/Benefits


What impact will these actions have on sustainability within Travel & Mobility?

Environment impact

               

According to the European cyclists federation, Cycling saves emissions equaling more than 16 million tons of CO2 equivalents per year only in the EU, reducing the pollution of the air. The use of this type of vehicles also reduces the volume of annoying sounds and noise pollution, leading to lower levels of hypertension and stress. The soils and water will be less contaminated because the infrastructure for bicycles occupies much less space than cars and also requires less elements. It also helps to manage energy waste estimating to save around 3 billions litres per year of fuel only in the EU. 

Health impact

The use of sustainable transportation lead to a longer and healthy life, reducing mortality and morbidity caused by stress and lack of exercise, at the same time it prevent diseases like type 2 diabetes, colon cancer, osteoporosis, cardiovascular diseases, among others. Backpackers that choose this type of tours have lower odds for developing depression and other serious mental health conditions.

Economical and social impact

An important focus of the project is to produce more laboral opportunities for local inhabitants that want to be a part of the tourism business and connect people from different backgrounds and social classes. The tours are expected to help grow the micro economies around the routes, the visitors are more likely to shop and consume products in the arounds because the pass near and are attracted by what they see. In some cases, like france, cycle tourists spend around 20% more than the average for all tourists.

Bicycles generally occupies less than other types of transportations like cars and bus, which makes it very space efficient and leave more room for more tourists. It is important to stand out that in seasonal tourism it's a lot more difficult to park a car and finding a place can lead to waste fuel.

More people walking and cycling in the streets increase the perception of security in the streets and saves time avoiding traffic. The bicycle also needs less maintenance and construction of road infrastructure for motorised transportation, which helps to conserve landscape and save costs.


About the team members

Students from the Buenos Aires Institute of Technology interested in innovative solutions that help to reduce climate change and create more opportunities for technology access and inclusion. Early this year the team was semifinalist with another project in the 2019 edition of L'Oréal Brandstorm Argentina.