ivie - Enhancing the Independent Traveller Experience

Shaping Vienna's ivie mobile app is a great example of creating a fulfilling experience for travellers who enjoy their own company. Available on iOS and Android devices, ivie is a large part of Shaping Vienna's 2025 Visitor Economy strategy.

How can you create a fulfilling experience for independent travellers?

Shaping Vienna's ivie mobile app is a great example of creating a fulfilling experience for travellers who enjoy their own company. Available on iOS and Android devices, ivie is a large part of Shaping Vienna's 2025 Visitor Economy strategy.

This strategy looks at certifying local operators to become more sustainable, improving satisfaction alongside revenue. With a new curation-led and editorial-driven website, the Vienna Tourism Board supports deeper discovery of the destination with this travel companion app; developing value tourism in parallel to demonstrating how Vienna can share, involve, pilot and pivot due to the pandemic.

Find out more about how this strategy came to be here  

The Logic and the Model

ivie acts as a companion app to the city of Vienna, showcasing a catalogue of businesses, attractions, restaurants and shops chosen by the tourism board itself. Highlighting the best businesses, users can navigate Vienna completely independently.

For the spontaneous or solo traveller, it saves time researching and shares local businesses efficiently, creating a comprehensive package for a variety of trip ideas. Using different formats like audio guides and video, users can explore the city completely independently, creating a richer experience.

Users can plan ahead of their visit by saving favourites and checking what is nearby - useful for creating an itinerary and pin-pointing go-to places. These pages include fun facts about the area or some contextual history.

Data can be collected with the permission of the traveller to track where current areas of interest are straight from the user itself.

Value Tourism

ivie offers two 'Walks & Guides' tours:

Discover Vienna with me – lists of suggested spots worth visiting

Guided Tour – a packaged version of several walks that can be purchased separately

These experiences can take users to hidden and unknown parts of the city they might not have discovered otherwise, creating a more immersive and valuable experience.

City Cards further incentivise the in-person experience, two types with varying discounts and perks.

The Experience Edition includes:

  1. Access to unique Vienna experiences
  2. Exclusive access and insights behind the scenes
  3. Discounted experiences
  4. 20% off on gastronomy experiences
  5. 20% off on hotel rooms
  6. Purely digital map
  7. €25 per year
  8. Personalisation

With Vienna's Visitor Economy strategy in mind, this gives more value to local businesses and keeps the user at the centre of each decision.

Find out more about ivie on the Shaping Vienna website

Key takeaways

  • If you can’t be there in person, build a digital companion for people in the city
  • Create connection between discovery, inspiration and practical tips
  • Use the app to understand where people are and where they are heading
  • Think about different formats (audio, text, video) to enrich discovery

How can you create a fulfilling experience for independent travellers?

Shaping Vienna's ivie mobile app is a great example of creating a fulfilling experience for travellers who enjoy their own company. Available on iOS and Android devices, ivie is a large part of Shaping Vienna's 2025 Visitor Economy strategy.

This strategy looks at certifying local operators to become more sustainable, improving satisfaction alongside revenue. With a new curation-led and editorial-driven website, the Vienna Tourism Board supports deeper discovery of the destination with this travel companion app; developing value tourism in parallel to demonstrating how Vienna can share, involve, pilot and pivot due to the pandemic.

Find out more about how this strategy came to be here  

The Logic and the Model

ivie acts as a companion app to the city of Vienna, showcasing a catalogue of businesses, attractions, restaurants and shops chosen by the tourism board itself. Highlighting the best businesses, users can navigate Vienna completely independently.

For the spontaneous or solo traveller, it saves time researching and shares local businesses efficiently, creating a comprehensive package for a variety of trip ideas. Using different formats like audio guides and video, users can explore the city completely independently, creating a richer experience.

Users can plan ahead of their visit by saving favourites and checking what is nearby - useful for creating an itinerary and pin-pointing go-to places. These pages include fun facts about the area or some contextual history.

Data can be collected with the permission of the traveller to track where current areas of interest are straight from the user itself.

Value Tourism

ivie offers two 'Walks & Guides' tours:

Discover Vienna with me – lists of suggested spots worth visiting

Guided Tour – a packaged version of several walks that can be purchased separately

These experiences can take users to hidden and unknown parts of the city they might not have discovered otherwise, creating a more immersive and valuable experience.

City Cards further incentivise the in-person experience, two types with varying discounts and perks.

The Experience Edition includes:

  1. Access to unique Vienna experiences
  2. Exclusive access and insights behind the scenes
  3. Discounted experiences
  4. 20% off on gastronomy experiences
  5. 20% off on hotel rooms
  6. Purely digital map
  7. €25 per year
  8. Personalisation

With Vienna's Visitor Economy strategy in mind, this gives more value to local businesses and keeps the user at the centre of each decision.

Find out more about ivie on the Shaping Vienna website

Key takeaways

  • If you can’t be there in person, build a digital companion for people in the city
  • Create connection between discovery, inspiration and practical tips
  • Use the app to understand where people are and where they are heading
  • Think about different formats (audio, text, video) to enrich discovery

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