Personalized travel guides created from locals’ Instagrams

Sweden’s Arlanda Airport has created the Local’s Guide — using real-time Instagrams by city residents to enable visitors to discover new locations through a personalized travel guide.

We’ve already seen travel recommendations inspired by social media trends in the form of SuggestMe, but now a new app from Sweden’s Stockholm Arlanda Airport — Local’s Guide — is using real-time updates by city residents on the photo-sharing platform to enable visitors to discover new locations through a personalized travel guide.

Currently available for tourists heading to one of ten global cities — Amsterdam, Bangkok, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Dubai, London, New York, Paris, Prague and Rome — the app uses open Instagram feeds to collect live photos being taken by locals in each city. Each photo comes with a geotag, showing the name of the venue it was taken, and if users like the look of it they can save it to their personalized guide. When they’ve finished, they can download an offline guide which offers a map and details of the venues they bookmarked. Stockholm Arlanda Airport has also installed a large touchscreen version of the app in its departure lounge. The video below explains more about the platform:

Available on both the App Store and Google Play, the Local’s Guide lets travelers see what’s happening in their chosen city right now, as well as create their own travel guides based on up-to-date information from the residents that know the city well. How else can social data be used to give tourists a real-time snapshot of what’s going on around the world?