What are Digital Passports?
Digital Passports work much like a traditional passport, which gets stamped as you travel the world and visit new locations. Digital Passports are apps built specifically for your destination, and they keep track of check-ins at your local places of interest.
A check-in can be made by using a secret code word, being within a geolocation radius, or by uploading an image. Each of these check-in types can be bundled for extra verification that the user truly did go to the business.
As users check-in to your passport’s specified locations, they can reach different levels of achievement. For example, three check-ins could equal ‘Novice’ level, six could equal ‘Intermediate’, and 10 check-ins could give them ‘Expert’ status. For each level achieved, you can offer different rewards.
These features and more make Digital Passports a great way to promote member and partner businesses, as well as keep track of the number of check-ins at each location.
All of this content is easily managed with the VisitApps Mobile Application Studio (MAS). If you choose to enable Digital Passports, you will be able to create passports using the Passport Container, Item and Property Draggables.
The Digital Passport can leverage Simpleview CRM Listings to quickly build out your passport items, or you can build them individually using the Passport Item Draggable.
How Can I Use Digital Passports?
Passports have several features that make them a great addition to your destination marketing initiatives. Passports are interactive tools that are designed to engage visitors with your local tourist attractions and businesses. They provide several key benefits that can take your app to the next level. Some of these benefits are:
- A way to gamify the visitor experience with an engaging activity
- You can collect visitor information and market to an engaged audience
- Ability to show local businesses definitive data on the value you provide regarding their business promotion
- Provides a way to measure economic impact through check-in data
Below are some common examples of how clients are using Digital Passports to market their destination:
- Food and beverage trail check-ins
- Guided walking or driving tour
- Scavenger hunts around your destination or for a specific event
- Incentivizing exhibitor table visits at meetings through check-in challenges
Should I Build My Passport In My App or Create a New App?
You can create a new Digital Passport anywhere you choose in your existing app. However, we recommend that you build out a completely new app for your Passport.
To request a new app for your passport, please submit a ticket to your Client Success Manager through the Simpleview Client Portal.
This approach achieves a few benefits:
- Across all industries, apps are designed to help users accomplish specific tasks. For example, Facebook has different apps for browsing the newsfeed, messaging, managing business pages and more. You don’t want to overwhelm your users by giving them too much information or things to do in a single app.
- Makes the Passport content easy to access. Users don’t need to navigate through an app to make check-ins.
- Allows for specialized branding of your Passport experience
- Keeps your Passport top-of-mind by having the app icon on the user’s screen.
Client Examples of Passports
Experience Grand Rapids’ Beer City Brewsader Passport (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/beer-city-brewsader/id1333313878?ls=1&mt=8)
VisitDallas’ Margarita Mile Passport (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/margarita-mile/id787643032)
Valley Forge CVB’s Montco Makers Passport (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/montco-makers/id836813207)
