Bagan Info

Idea

Oneliner

If you were a tourist in Bagan, a beautiful and ancient city of Myanmar, you need to grab this app to know which tourist attraction sites are currently populated, or other real-time information about the Bagan.

Solution and Use case

The idea is to contribute to the country's development, especially in the tourism sector and cultural heritage promotion and conservation by using advanced technology and smart idea. Since 1996, Myanmar launched "Visit Myanmar Year 1996" program to promote the tourism sector.

However, the program seemed to be difficult to achieve the expectation due to limited information about the tourist attraction sites, as well as civil conflicts. Despite Myanmar possessing great tourist potential and attractions in many respects, the number of visitors to Burma is small compared to her neighbours, outpaced by even Laos. According to national statistics, tourists comprised 73.84% (313,127 arrivals) of overseas visitors in the 2010-2011 fiscal year, with revenue of $315 million in 2011 by tourism sector alone.
Addressing the great tourist potential, it is necessary to provide the information about the tourist attraction sites, while conserving the cultural heritage by effectively managing the revenue derived from tourism sector. 

Therefore, the project aims to develop the web-based application, collecting the real-time information of tourist destinations in Myanmar, which should be user-friendly. At the same time, the project intends to promote the market for local products at or around the tourist sites. Therefore, as a case, we select the Bagan, which is one of the famous tourist attraction sites in Myanamar, for this project.

Besides, there are several levels of zoning in Bagan such as property zone and buffer zone. However, not all the information is readily available, and each authority seems to have their own version of such maps in managing the different spots within the heritage area. It needs to plan out tourists to be dispersed throughout the cultural heritage property and into the surrounding areas⁴. Moreover, there have been several reported case of visitors not following the regulations set up by the local authority in order to ensure the integrity and sustainability of the site. Currently, according to the many survey, the tourists find it difficult to be informed of specific information about each spots, activities, and shops. 

The current issues can be summarized as follow-

1) Limited information on each spots, activities, and shops located within the site- 

2) Ineffective management tool (particularly zoning and increasing local income)- 

3) Fail to follow the regulations by the visitors

Therefore, this app will

• Help tourists familiarize local traditions originated long time ago especially for those who don’t want to rely on tour guides, by providing a lot information about history, and monuments, site maps and accomondation;
• Help tourists to know which tourist spots are crowded in a timely manner as well;
• Being intended for UNESCO sites, tourists will receive reminders whether here is nominated property areas or buffer zone and what are the restrictions and how they can behave within each zone;
• Enhance local livelihood activities leading to responsible tourism;
• Provide information about local beliefs for each itinerary on how they had formed, when they started and why people still believe those. The location for local businesses and available transportation spots, and activities will also be provided through GNSS tool.

Use of GNSS

We would like to use GNSS Signals in our simple app as follow:
- To know the real-time information about the number of tourists/visitors at a specific tourist hotspot, using the signals (A few visitors may not use signals, but it seems to be negligible.)  

- To inform the visitors/tourists (as alert) whether they are in property zone (which is strictly managed), and they are approached to the zone

Specific use of Galileo

• Historical Information about the temples and stupas
• Search and filterable for notable cultural sites
• Routes to sites and estimated time to get there by different transportation mode (car, motorcycle, etc)
• Location of temples and stupas within the WHS (attached with the photos or 360 Street View)
• Providing the zoning level of the site and the restrictions to follow
• Hotels’ information and location (Easy booking)
• Local enterprise including souvenirs shops location describing the sample types of the souvenirs
• Providing Weather information 

Market Potential

• Customer segment
  • Domestic and International Tourists
  • Local businesses such as souvenir shops, restaurants, etc. 
  • Hotel and tourism agencies 
  • Government agencies for better tourism management 
  • UNESCO 
• Total addressable market (TAM)
  • According to the statistics by Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, Myanmar received over 4.36 million foreign visitors in 2019. Bagan is one of the famous tourist attraction sites and one of the UNESCO sites in Myanmar. According to the report, 470000 foreign visitors came to Bagan alone. 
  • If we think to include domestic visitors, local businesses and other customers as stated above, a huge number of TAM could be expected.
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Innovation factor

In our app, the service providing the real-time information regarding the crowded sites, an alert system is our innovation to help our customers for their comfort and easy-to-go tour around the city by themselves.

Using our app, our customers will easily know which tourist hotspot should be the suitable to visit, and due to alert system, they will easily notice what they could do or could not do in the property zone. 

Also, as for the management body of the respective tourist hotspot, they could conserve their cultural heritage in a smart manner.

Technical back-end

We would like to develop the simple app using our idea, using the GNSS signals. In combination of Galileo‘s accuracy, especially for crowded information and for alert system, we essentially needs the integrated system. However, we may need the app developer. 

Proof of concept

The final product would be a mobile app for iOS and android. Due to limited app developing capacity, we created a mockup using figma.
https://www.figma.com/file/I6yjewetXqs1htGOHQzVNW/Bagan-Info?node-id=0%3A1

EU GNSS technologies (Galileo)

In this app, we would like to use the real-time information provided by Galileo to show the tourists where the crowded sites are. To know the real-time information, Galileo is much more precise in geographical position system. Without Galileo, the app would not work in function. 

Team 

Five newbies from different interested fields form a team.
1. Dr. Nyein Chan is a post-doctoral researcher in Area Studies and Ethnic Land Use. He will coordinate the team.
2. Mr. Kyaw Zeyar Tun is working as a Director at Remote Sensing and GIS Research Center, Yangon Technological University, Yangon, and he provides the background information and idea in Bagan.
3. Ms. Nway Nway Aung will join as an information and technical assistant.
4. Mr. Zwe Maung Maung is a government staff at Forest Department, and will be joining the team as a data and information collector for the drafted project.
5. Mr. Thet Oo is a government staff at Forest Department, and will be joining the team as a data collector while helping the finalization of the drafted project in terms of ideas, language, and information.