GeoTravel: a one-person start-up uses 3D augmented reality and satellite navigation for a successful travel app

The Entrepreneur

Davide Vincenzi is a 31-year-old Italian entrepreneur, who has been living and working in Ticino, Switzerland since 2011. On the side of his regular project manager and developer job, in 2010 he started to create mobile applications to fill in a market gap.

The challenge

Davide has always been interested in augmented reality technologies and understood that integrating them in mobile apps would potentially give them a competitive edge, especially in the tourism sector. He identified a gap on the market in terms of travel apps using augmented reality and able to guide users to points of interest in a city, in order to enhance the travelling experience. Not finding this app on the market, he decided to create it. 

The satellite solution 

Davide created GeoTravel, a 3D augmented reality application that enables users to create their own travel guides, world-wide. Users who download the application can choose their points of interest, restaurants and other attractions they wish from among GeoTravel’s coordinates of the 25,000 destinations and three million points of interest with corresponding Wikipedia entries.

Once on the spot, users point their mobile phones in the direction of the selected points of interest to see on their mobile phone their name, location, distance, or corresponding Wikipedia entry. Thanks to the 3D augmented reality the user sees a layer of graphic information showing their surroundings.

The result

The app was downloaded more than 100,000 times. It was so successful that Davide could charge for downloads. The success of GeoTravel enabled him to pursue his passion for creating innovative, fun and useful apps using 3D augmented reality. He established AugmentedWorks, a brand under which he sells his other apps, such as the very successful “Find your car”, which has already reached one million users.

“A travel guide on steroids. Not only helps you get around more conveniently in a foreign city, it also takes advantage of AR technology to help you get to your points of interest faster.” Davide Vincenzi, Augmented works owner