Imagine for a second you are going on a vacation somewhere in Croatia. You can choose between beautiful beaches, historical towns, cities like Dubrovnik, several regions that cover all seasons, and so on. Even though we have almost everything in Croatia, the most exciting offers and activities or offers often lie beneath the surface. But how to get to those hidden gems? That’s precisely the question that sparked the idea of a web platform that transforms passive tourists into an active one.

So, what is active and what’s a passive tourist, and how does the AT platform work? While a strict definition doesn’t exist, average tourists in Croatia, besides swimming, sunbathing, and the usual beach activities, are not sure what to do next and often don’t know how to find relevant information, especially if it is local or long-term tourists. Even when they see themselves in or near a major tourist destination rich in culture and different events, going on a free walking tour or visiting a museum while being pleasant activities doesn’t make the tourist the main character in the story.

On the other hand, the community, as in locals and their businesses, usually gets left out of the whole story. Active tourism allows tourists to create their own highly personal experience and scratch beneath the surface of the mainstream offer while connecting to the locals.

Benefits for the community

The platform is directed toward three types of users – tourists, tourist boards, and service providers, the latter being locals we wrote about in the last paragraph. Besides the advantages for tourists, there is also a massive benefit for the community, for whom this application is equally intended. Namely, the biggest problem for service providers, i.e., small producers, craftsmen, artisans, tourist guides, and others, is visibility, which usually does not come without adequate investments in marketing activities. Through the AT platform, all service providers, be it unique domestic products, experiences, or tailor-made tours, can be visible without these investments undertaken by the tourist board through yearly subscriptions. Additionally, each tourist board gets its homepage and can locally manage and tailor the selection of offers or create custom itineraries based on the interests of different groups of tourists.

From idea to reality

So, the idea is to turn a passive into an active tourist. Having that in mind, we adapted the visual identity, with the key focus being the idea of the movement from one point to another. Moving is a physical aspect of moving and is a metaphor for this transformation. The colors we used follow the landscape and familiar colors tourists assign to Croatia, the seaside, and tourism. The colors are sometimes oversaturated but accompanied by their pastel counterparts for a delicate balance. The typography is straightforward and significant, combined with rounded elements, communicates openness and friendliness and invites tourists to participate in the community.

The most prominent cue for using the platform is custom signage and personalized stickers for the service providers’ locations containing QR codes, which lead to the offers by scanning via mobile phone. The tourist board makes sure to put custom signs in areas around the tourist hotspots, and in addition, every service provider can choose to put a sticker with a QR code on their business doors or wherever they see fit to help increase visibility.

All this fits perfectly into optimizing the time tourists spend rediscovering a specific location’s charms and transforming passive tourists into active ones by gradually teaching them how to find the next adventure.

Since you came to the end of this text, that probably means you have an idea for a similar project. If we’re onto something, give us a ring.