Tourism could get wireless phone charge

Picture yourself walking through Renaissance Park in North Chattanooga and pausing at the site where Cherokee Indians began the overland march of the Trail of Tears.

Using your mobile phone, you access an audio podcast of the site’s history, along with pictures of the view as it was a century ago.

By this summer, that vision could be a reality.

Local educators, community and business leaders are considering a high-tech tourism pilot program that would piggy-back on a revitalization of the Chattanooga waterfront and the North Shore and appeal to a younger, technology-savvy population.

Planners want to create an outdoor, public museum tour that is available to any interested person who has Bluetooth technology in their mobile phone.

“It’s an alternative to cast-iron markers and the kinds of historic markers you see in a battlefield,” said Jim Frierson, executive director of the Advanced Transportation Technology Institute. “You can’t stick something like that in a city on the sidewalk.”

Dozens of community leaders met Friday at the Development Resource Center to consider a proposal from Cambridge, England-based Hypertag.

The company provides the technology that links short-range mobile technologies, such as Bluetooth, to devices that can send content such as video, games, audio podcasts or music directly to a wireless phone.

The Hypertag technology has been widely used, particularly in Europe, in the commercial arena, said Raffi Vartian, the company’s U.S. marketing representative.

But he said no city has used the technology to highlight its historical landmarks in this way.

“There is no community that’s even thinking about this, as far as I know,” he said.

Attendees at meetings on Friday included representatives from the Chattanooga History Center, Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority, Allied Arts, Outdoor Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership.

The planners haven’t come up with any cost estimates, but Mr. Frierson guessed a pilot would cost in the tens of thousands of dollars and a full-scale implementation likely would be over $50,000.

Mr. Frierson said the technology may appeal particularly to people in the 18-to-34 age range.

The program also could help bridge the cultural gaps for the area’s growing immigrant population if other languages were included in the content offerings, said the Rev. Mike Feely, executive director of the St. Andrews Center, which works predominantly with the Chattanooga’s growing Hispanic community. Mr. Feely attended the discussion of Hypertag on Friday.

“We’re also constantly looking for ways to integrate people in the community, to say, ‘Here’s how to learn more about where you are,’” he said. “The (Hispanic) community uses cell phones so much already that this could be a real natural (venue) for easy application.”

POTENTIAL HIGH-TECH TOURISM SITES

* Signal Knitting Mill on Manufacturers Road

* Ross’s Landing

* Dome Building in downtown Chattanooga

* Stream in Renaissance Park that is being remediated

* Along the Tennessee Riverwalk

Source: Jim Frierson, Advanced Transportation Technology Institute

POP QUOTE

“There is no community that’s even thinking about this, as far as I know.” — Raffi Vartian, Hypertag’s U.S. marketing representative, on a wireless tourism program eyed for Chattanooga.