CLIENT: NETHERLANDS TOURIST BOARD
ROLE: UX DESIGNER (SOLE)
Amsterdam is struggling to stem the unstoppable tide of tourists that floods its streets every year – over-tourism is harming this European city. Tourist numbers for 2025 are calculated to reach 23 million. Many people in Amsterdam consider this to be unsustainable and are eager for a solution to be found.
The Netherlands Tourism Board’s report ‘Perspective 2030’ outlines that one of their key aims is to encourage tourists to visit lesser-known parts of the Netherlands to recapture the city of Amsterdam. Not only would this relieve some of the burden on Amsterdam but it could potentially benefit locals elsewhere and grow tourism economies across other cities in the Netherlands.
BRIEF:
To create an engaging app that guides tourists and visitors around the city of Rotterdam and enables them to plan an itinerary of events with friends. No getting lost (unless you want to), or wasted time trying to find the hidden gems around the city – places to eat, drink, shop and explore, all recommended by local residents acting as ambassadors for their city. The app can also be enjoyed by locals discovering new experiences, restaurants and things to do.
As a pilot project, this MVP needs to have an approach that can be applied easily to other cities in the Netherlands to promote their city and tackle this widely.
Mapping out the experience
Through empathy mapping both the tourist and the local user (with assumptions), it was clear that they had some similarities in terms of their needs and decision-making such as – Where’s best to visit? What can I fit into my weekend? What if I need a last minute Plan B?
With the locals acting as ambassadors for their city, it provides a sustainable and on-going way of keeping the app content up-to-date when new places and experiences open and close.
Prototyping first thoughts
The app needs to provide a rich browsing experience and provide users with:
– a planning tool to capture itineraries of one-off events and day-to-day plans
– the ability to share and change these itineraries with friends and travel companions
– a range of authentic reviews from locals, bite-size and longer more indepth reviews
– a helpful Gen-AI bot to suggest either full weekend itineraries or one-off places to go.
Brand positioning: Build your own experience
A playful visual identity was created to represent the types of activities and experiences within the app. The shape suite was designed to be generic so that it could be applied to other cities across the Netherlands, creating a light-touch, consistent and efficient approach. Alot of the locals are proud of their cities and all they have to offer – research tells us that the number of guests in the domestic market for holidays and extended business trips will grow to 30.9 million by 2030 (NBTC-NIPO research).
Your Rotterdam. Your experience.
Social media advertising was created to boost brand awareness and drive downloads of the app by using the unique insights that locals can provide to enhance an experience.
A concept trying to answer a real-world problem.
