Location-based app as a sustainable basis for recreation

In an effort to make the forest more accessible to visitors and to find business opportunities for both forest owners and ecotourism companies, The World Forest Forum partnered with Locatify to develop the app Meet Nature.

The app was developed with Granö Beckasin, an eco-resort with a little hotel, camping, restaurant, and fun guided activities in Västerbotten, Northern Sweden. With the app, Granö Beckasin broadens its range of nature activities by offering visitors a different digital guide during their hikes along its many trails, using GPS to trigger the content in the appropriate places.

“I think there are many of us who just “walk on” in the forest, without noticing all the amazing things that are around us. But with the Meet Nature app, I had reason to stop, observe and learn completely new things” says Annika Rydman, Vice President of Granö Beckasin.

One of the cabins at Granö Beckasin

The World Forest Forum

The World Forest Forum is a foundation involved in developing solutions for sustainable development and use of forest. The global foundation’s long-term goals include pursuing projects that produce lasting results and acting as an incentive as well as a platform for taking care of and developing the forest’s resources.

A part of WFF’s strategy is to use Granö Beckasin as a partner and a type of development hub, where it develops its working methods and prototypes that once ready, are intended for export.

They seek to develop the forest in three areas:

• Forestry of the future, actively asking questions about the role of the forest in future social construct
• New products and services that actively reduce global warming, how the eternally renewable raw material wood is best used
• A sustainable basis for recreation and experiences, where the Meet Nature app is a part of the strategy

The forest is an integral part of Swedish society and culture, and their stakeholders include anyone that sees the forest as a sustainable and eternally renewable resource; private individuals, forest owners, companies, and organisations.

“We want to highlight the forest’s hidden values. One of our goals is to develop completely new solutions that give forest owners opportunities to develop nature experiences”, says Bengt Waldemarson, co-founder of WFF and Meet Nature’s project leader. 

“The Swedish forest is an enormous resource”

The app contains both shorter and longer tours that can be enjoyed in all seasons on foot, with snowshoes, or with skis.

Apart from tours, the app also contains quiz-style games, where players learn about the forest and the life in it with quizzes, as well as a quiz on river plants and animals to be completed in a canoe. Quiz challenges include multiple-choice and single-answer text questions and points are awarded for finding locations and for completing challenges.

See a short video in Swedish about the app:

The app content is added and can be updated anytime with the cloud-based Locatify Creator CMS®.

App content includes tours, treasure hunt games, menu icons, and content as well as custom pins that represent the plants or animals of the area. Any tour or game can be tested extensively before publishing and then published with one click once it’s ready.

Menu icons and content can also be updated easily from the app backend in the CMS.

Allowing people to explore and learn on their own terms

Besides the obvious fact that it allows organisations within the tourism sector to scale their businesses more effectively, a tour-guide app can also give users more freedom than a regular guided tour. Not everybody is up for moving around in packs and following a guide, and not everybody has the budget for it either.

By adding self-guided tours in an app that users can download to their own smartphones to their offering, tourist guide organisations can make their tours more accessible to all. They can both offer more tours because they are not dependent on a physical tour guide being on location at all times, and should they decide to charge for their tours, they can also keep the prices down.

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