Abstract:

Tourism has seen an unparalleled increase in the last few decades and as such, the number of visits to UNESCO world heritage sites is also on the rise, and alongside this is the use and proliferation of smartphones, which allowed the development of apps in many fields including tourism. Despite this fact, research on what information tourists seek while visiting historical sites is still scarce. The present study aims to verify the information that tourists consider more critical to have at their disposal during their visit to world heritage sites, to this end a qualitative survey with open questions was conducted at the entrance of two of the most visited world heritage sites in Sintra, Portugal, the first site in Europe to be recognized as Cultural Landscape and which houses a large cultural offer within its area.

Through interviews with tourists, we obtained the data to elaborate a concept map – using Leximancer –, in which we found five main themes (History, Map, Use, Information, and View), representing the most important concepts in the proposal and development of the intended tourist app.

This paper proposes the key concepts, or requirements, that must be taken into account in the development of a new technological prototype for supporting and guide tourist during their monument or tourist attraction visit.

The needs of the tourist user should always be considered when designing products as such this paper proposes the requirements necessary for a world heritage site guiding app and compares it with what the currently existing apps deliver.

Keywords:

Tourism, Cultural Heritage, Information, World Heritage Sites, Devapp, Education.