How to offer a new way of discovering Paris to tourists in order to personalise the visit and avoid congestion in touristic areas?
THE CONTEXT
38 million tourists visit Paris every year: it is one of the world's leading destinations. These tourists are mainly focused on very specific areas: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre-Dame de Paris, the banks of the Seine. However, many less-visited Parisian neighbourhoods also have a very beautiful heritage. Encouraging tourists to discover these areas would offer them both a richer experience in less crowded places and would constitute an economic opportunity for these neighbourhoods.
38 million
tourists visit Paris
every year
THE CHALLENGE
The experiment aims to propose a recommendation service of walking routes corresponding to the tastes and the desires of the tourists. Mastercard has partnered with the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Parisian Urban Planning Workshop, the City of Paris and MFG Labs, a startup specialising in artificial intelligence and the design of new digital services. Together, they conducted interviews with American tourists visiting the Musée d'Orsay to better understand their expectations and needs. They also met tourism professionals such as hoteliers. The development of the solution was then done in successive stages for each part: the graphical interface, the algorithms generating the routes and their editorial presentation. The solution was tested on American tourists in Paris who used the application.
THE STARTUP
MFG Labs is an expert consulting and production company specialised in data and artificial intelligence. They help companies improve their decision-making, automate processes, and create new services through their expertise in data science, design, and advanced technologies.
THE PARTNERS
THE SOLUTION
The partners have developed a web application generating personalised alternative tourist itineraries in Paris. Integrated into the website of the Paris Convention and Visitors Bureau, it recommends areas for visits depending on the starting position, their available time, their tastes and the type of requested points of interest. The algorithm offers several routes on the map of Paris, and the user can compare the different circuits. This service is now available on the website www.paris.info.