Covered needs
SNAPP helps tourists to:
• Discover local heritage sites and related cultural activities
• Know all the city’ best hotspots
• Choose the places they would like to visit most
• Identify nearby locations and buildings
• Find out key information about locations and buildings without visiting them
• Enjoy personalized experiences
• Make reservations and payments
Targeted Users and Context of Use
Tourists
If we view tourists as target customers, their context of use would be exploring the city and learning about its many attractions. Millions of tourists come to Dubai annually; however they usually do not have enough time to visit all the destinations they planned to.
Citizens
If we view residents as target users, their context of use may include getting help with finding office buildings. Additionally, the application may be used to explore the city while visiting friends and family.
Local Artists
It is a well known fact that the government is trying to promote local artists and SNAPP may be instrumental in helping with this cause. For example, instead of displaying a landmark photograph, the application would randomly display a local artist’s rendition of the landmark (e.g. a drawing, 3D model, oil painting, etc.) with the option to see more info about the artist (including name, short bio, and a link to the artist’s website). Artists would be able to submit their renditions, and after review by an administrator, get them posted in the landmark gallery.
Business model
How do you plan to make money with your app and make it sustainable? How do you plan get users?
How do you plan to make money with your app and make it sustainable? How do you plan get users?
Plan to get users:
The first goal is to attract 1000 users, with the 1000th user being awarded a citywide tour which will include the most popular landmarks in Dubai. Full video footage of the tour will be used to target new users through YouTube pre-roll Ads to incite them to download the app.
Ways to attract new users:
• A targeted campaign aimed at tourists who land at the Dubai International Airport (via Google Adwords platform) and who have plans to research the city.
• Partnership with companies which provide taxi services (Uber, Careem) where visitors who land in Dubai will get a voucher for a ride from the airport if they install SNAPP.
• Partnership with hospitality companies to promote their services by using the SNAPP application.
Recommendation is the primary means of attracting new users. By partnering with businesses in hospitality, we will offer discount vouchers which may be shared with other people who do not have the SNAPP application. This will motivate them to install the app and use the vouchers. To encourage persons to keep using the app, we will continue to provide specific vouchers depending on the current location of the users. For example:
• Tourists at airports will get discount vouchers for a taxi ride from the airport.
• Tourists who are staying at a hotel will get offers to visit popular landmarks, restaurants and clubs in that area, depending on their personal interests.
• Citizens will get offers to visit areas of the city they have never visited before. By keeping track of their behavior and the places they have already visited, the application’s recommendations will be very precisely targeted.
Plan to make money:
During the first three months the goal is to collect as many landmarks and work with as many businesses as we can. At a later stage we will offer current and new businesses the opportunity to stand out from the others and highlight their individual presence. Ways of highlighting businesses include:
• Providing more information about the business (detailed description, picture gallery, video)
• Displaying products and services in a more dynamic way.
• Providing reservation and payment services (through MasterCard API)
• Emphasizing the business in certain functionalities of the application
Other ways of monetization:
1. SNAPP Stories
SNAPP stories (Photo and text) are stories from residents of Dubai who want to share their experiences.
In addition, we follow current events and other interesting and unique stories which are related to the city. These stories will be one of the main sources of monetization as we can indirectly promote any location in Dubai with a good story.
2. SNAPPenger Hunt
Daily or weekly awards can be awarded to users who SNAPP the most photos during the period, thereby motivating the users to actually use the app.
A special feature is called the "SNAPPenger Hunt". This is of course a scavanger hunt feature, where, for example, an administrator could configure a daily scavenger hunt that includes 5 important landmarks in Dubai. When a user visits all of the landmarks, they are given some prize, such as a discount in a restaurant located within the last landmark.
This feature accomplishes multiple goals:
• It motivates users to use the app, benefiting the application owner.
• It incentivizes restaurant owners to actively participate in the project, making it more attractive for them to update their business info in the app, integrate with the booking system etc. which benefits both the application (more content and up-to-date data) and the restaurant owners (more customers).
• Finally, it benefits the city itself - one of the Dubai Smart City goals is to "help manage the flow of visitors in the city" - so the city itself would be able to participate in the process of choosing landmarks for the scavenger hunt, thereby accomplishing the goal of guiding tourists to specific places they wish to promote.
• The feature always has a "Next destination" button - which opens the next destination landmark's description screen, and the user can choose the "Take me there" option to be guided there. After the user gets to the landmark, their location is detected via GPS, and the next destination is revealed within the SNAPPenger Hunt screen. Once the last destination is reached, the SNAPPenger Hunt screen will display a "Congratulations" message, which informs the user of the prize they've won, and explains how and where to claim it.
Open Data & APIs used (if any)
FIWARE GEs, MasterCard APIS, iCity,
The SNAPP web application needs to provide an API through which client applications will fetch data, as well as an administrative panel for managing all the server-side data.
The main entities in the system are:
• Landmark
o Landmark reference photo (photographs used for matching)
o Landmark reference logo (images of the logo used for matching)
o Landmark image (images of the landmark shown to the app users)
• Business (located within a landmark)
o Business image
o Business review
• Point Of Interest
• User
• Uploaded photo (images captured by app users and submitted for matching, if the user has given permission for SNAPP™ to store these)
Reservations API
The SNAPP backend allows business owners to integrate their reservations system with SNAPP. MasterCard API will be used to provide payment if user needs to pay certain amount to the business to reserve or book the service/buy the product.
MasterCard APIS
SNAPP will use MasterPass service integrated inside the mobile app. We decided to use MasterCard Paypass for the following reasons:
• Single integration to support all the MasterPass-connected wallets, including MasterPass by MasterCard wallet.
• Multi-channel support across e-commerce, mobile web, and iOS/Android apps
• Streamlined checkout designed to reduce cart abandonment
• Minimize fraud through proprietary features such as mobile verification
• MasterPass by MasterCard is a secure, fast, and open service that supports all major credit cards