If you browse the topic “augmented reality” at, say, the iTunes App store, you will find a majority of the results relate to the travel and tourism industry.  A likely reason for this is the increasing number of smartphones, tablets and other intelligent handheld devices. These devices do away with the need to carry travel guide books, maps and phone numbers, as these are now bundled into a neat little app that can be conveniently carried wherever the traveller wants to go.

Augmented reality is technology that offers the traveller a lot of real time information at her fingertips at little or no cost. Augmented reality helps you superimpose the digital world on the real world via the camera’s view, helping you see data about cafes, restaurants, hotels, shop offers, menu translations and landmark locations, to name just a few. Augmented reality is not only practical, but also opens up a whole new world around the traveller. It makes a great companion that helps find places and attractions that one might otherwise miss. It is primarily a means for finding travel information. Augmented reality leverages the smartphone’s GPS, high resolution camera, compass, gyroscope and accelerometer to locate your orientation and feed you relevant information.

Popular augmented reality apps in tourism and travel

Among the big brands that have explored and adopted augmented reality is Lonely Planet, a trusted travel guide, which has over 25 Compass Guides. By holding up the mobile phone in front of you, you can receive info on your screen, superimposed on the visual via the camera lens in the real world. You can then choose the category you want from hotels, restaurants and sights based on your relative location from the place with the actual distance. Yelp and TripAdvisor also have their own augmented reality apps.

Among the top ten augmented reality tourism and travel apps are mTrip, Layar, Junaio and Wikitude which present data from third party sources. Here s an overview of some of these augmented reality apps:

• A free AR app from Layar gives you layers of real world information on your phone screen in relation to your current location. Let us say you are in Greece. You can use Layar to browse the history of Greece, find your way to the nearest train station, museum or restaurant or bank, all with the help of virtual signs.
• mTrip is a city travel guide augmented reality app that shows hundreds of features for over 28 destinations. It also has offline navigation and can create custom itineraries that do not need an internet connection. Users find it somewhat cluttered and limited beyond city limits.
• TripAdvisor’s travel app has an augmented reality feature called Live View which filters through hotels, restaurants and other interesting sights. Users can see hotel ratings and contact info with street view with just one click.
• Wikitude locates restaurants, shops and other sights using third party content from Starbucks, YouTube, Gowalla and Foursquare with photos and videos of the location. It lets the user narrow down results with a search tab.

On the flip side, many users prefer to stick with the Google Maps services that give them accurate directions without having to hold their smart phones in front of them all the time. Some augmented reality apps make it tough to adjust the distance range of locations. Users feel that augmented reality apps that can be pointed to a specific building and tell them what’s inside would be more useful.

As an emerging and exciting technology, while augmented reality has tremendous possibilities, it still has to develop because there is a huge area to be covered out there. There is much to look forward to!