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Mobile phones turn travel guides

Michael Fitzpatrick

LONDON: The thickets of camera-toting Japanese visitors that were once a feature of every tourist site are a dying breed. They are being replaced by a new generation who have ditched their Nikons for cameraphones and are peering into their handsets for travel guidance.

The subject of their contemplation? GPS-enabled, location-pertinent travel guides dished out on the same handset they use at home. They will be perusing the same type of advice people in the West can retrieve from a chip or download wirelessly on our phones — street navigation, restaurant guides or weather reports. The difference is that the Japanese versions have GPS (global positioning system): the phones know where they are.

Two huge industries, IT and tourism, are getting excited about the marriage of satellite location systems and travel guides. It means hefty travel books will soon get the heave-ho, according to travel writer Adam Katz. All the savvy traveller will need is a toothbrush and a mobile. ``In the very near future, we will ask our phones if there are any recommended Italian restaurants within 100 metres. The phone will lead us on walking tours of Paris telling us about each historical site as we stroll by,'' he says. ``You don't have to be online - you just need to make one call when you arrive in a city and download all the data.''

Seduced long ago by the mobile voice, Internet and MP3 players, Japanese mobile users are used to turning to their ``ketais'' for travel news, maps, train time-tables, restaurant and city guides. Now a GPS utility has come along in the form of navigation guides and teamed up with translation software.

Vodafone's Navi GPS navigation service enables customers to check their location, search for information on the surrounding area and find the best routes to destinations. And this is not just at home.

Tell the device where you want to go and it will work out where you are and give you spoken or graphic guidance to your destination. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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Mobile phones turn travel guides

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