Hidden Tasmania

Tasmania has an amazing arts and food industry. Our platform highlights the hidden small businesses in Tasmania.

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University Research Theme

Creativity, Culture and Society Knick Knacks - Student Division

Inspiration

Since the first Dark MOFO event in 2013, Tasmania’s tourism industry has boomed, rising by almost 50% over the last 5 years, compared to only a 4% increase in the 5 years prior. Additionally the average visitor spend has increased by approximately 70% over the last 5 years, and tourism has increased by 122,000 occupations, which is more than half the total increase of employment in Tasmania over the last 5 years. This boost in tourism and industry growth can largely be attributed to the MONA effect.

However, this boost has led to government agencies redirecting significant funding to Mona related events and institutions, which has in turn reduced funding towards local artists and small businesses. “Local artists are struggling to maintain a place as the Mona juggernaut rolls out is festivals and its power and influence”.

Our research has shown that booming tourism will fade if it only reinforces the same institutions. We believe that best way to tackle this impending issue is to encourage government institutions to redistribute funding to smaller businesses, to promote more variety and a uniquely Tasmanian experience. We have developed an app to tackle this issue by solely focusing on promoting small Tasmanian tourism businesses.

What it does

The primary purpose of the application is to highlight the small businesses and local artists of Tasmania and encourage and incentivise tourists to engage in all Tasmania has to offer.

The app will highlight 5 different categories including food, drinks, art, music and events. Each category will contain a list of the small businesses that offer that particular service within a 25km distance of your current location, listed in order of nearest to furthest away. There will be an option for users to favourite listings, which will be added to their “My Tasmania” list.

Our app will also have a sixth category titled “adventures”. This category will provide a list of already established holiday trails, ranging around the state, with small businesses from the app plotted along these popular trails. To provide incentive for tourists to visit these businesses, each popular public tourist attraction will posses a QR code that can be scanned by the app to unlock exclusive offers, such as a free wine tasting or discounted meals.

Local businesses may apply to register their business through the app by answering a series of screening questions, including information on yearly revenue and what specialty products they display. If it is determined that this business aligns with the key values of the app they will be granted access to their own detailed description page, which allows them to choose how they advertise their business within the formatting of the app.

How we built it

We built this application using XCode programming in swift. Firebase was used to set up the back end database however we didn't get our login functionality fully implemented.

Challenges we ran into

The largest development issue we found was version control with XCode storyboards.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Putting an interface together in a couple of days, and producing a businesses model for a topic we believe could have a large positive impact on Tasmania. Additionally, we were really proud of ourselves for being able to put together specific features of the app, such as a "my list" button

What's next for Highlighting Tasmania by Knick-Knacks

The next steps are to get a database of clients and start engaging in the community. We want to have advertisments for our services at airports, hotels and at car rental services. Our long term goal is to be featured on the news and be one of the most trusted sources when it comes to Tasmanian Toursim. We want engage tourists in all Tasmania has to offer.

Research Sources

Dr Kate Booth, Hobart’s poorer suburbs are missing out on the ‘MONA effect’, available at http://www.utas.edu.au/news/2018/6/18/646-hobarts-poorer-suburbs-are-missing-out-on-the-mona-effect/

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