Bremen: promoting biking for a smarter city thanks to a geolocated guide.
The city
Bremen is a German Hanseatic city of almost 550,000 inhabitants. Thanks to a flat landscape and its 700 km of cycle paths, Bremen has the highest bicycle traffic in Germany, making up to 25% of the overall daily city traffic.
Economic Development Bremen (Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen GmbH) is responsible, among other missions, for promoting and developing the city’s attractiveness and quality of life on behalf of the municipality.
The challenge
Bremen needed a new and more advanced marketing tool, slightly different from printed maps and brochures, to promote biking in Bremen to locals and tourists.
In 2012, the Senate of the Federal State of Bremen mandated Economic Development Bremen to promote both tourism and smart city mobility through the development of biking facilities and opportunities, in line with Bremen’s strategy of being a “bike city”.
The satellite solution
In June 2013, Bremen launched the project “Bremen and Bremerhaven, bike it!” with the financial support of the European Development Fund for touristic development.
Bremen City partnered with BikeCityGuide, an Austrian start-up which develops navigation software especially designed for cyclists. Bremen bought a license for two years, during which locals and tourists can download the application on their mobile device for free.
Thanks to the geolocation system the app relies on, users can easily navigate through the city and discover touristic points of interest or attractive bike routes. The application also integrates a vocal guide and is available in various languages.
In addition, Bremen bought a few thousands “Finn”, a smartphone holder designed for bikes, and distributes them in a Bremen-branded packaging, supporting promotion and marketing activities.
The result
The Bremen bike city guide was launched in March 2014 and presented at the world’s biggest tourism fair, ITB Berlin. In April 2014, Bremen organised an official press conference, inviting journalists and media representatives to test the application. Within 24 hours, the app was downloaded 2,200 times and received very positive feedback.
Easy to handle, free of charge and especially designed for cyclists, the Bremen city guide is a useful tool to promote city attractiveness and address both tourism and mobility objectives.
The App is excellent at helping locals and tourists easily find the best cycling routes and discover the most interesting places in Bremen. It helps promote Bremen as a bike city with a high quality of life.
Klaus-Peter Land, Managing director ADFC Bremen, (German Cyclist’s Feferation, Bremen)
