'I Need Spain' FREE iPad application to promote tourism in Spain

Juan Guerrero Righetto, director of marketing at Segittur (State Society for the Management and Innovation of Touristic Technology) wanted to create a social application and opted for presenting it during the AppDate event that took place yesterday rather than calling a press conference.  AppDate is a monthly event in Madrid that is dedicated to discovering and creating incentives for the creation of programs and applications for mobile phones and pads.

The application known as “I need Spain”  is a virtual application that is completely free and is already available in the AppStore that allows users to tour Spain interactively based on the experiences of others who have already visited the country.

Currently the program is only available for the iPad because Guerrero and his team “wanted it to be as emotional and enveloping as possible by uniting  the visual, auditory and tactile experience”.  The program already boasts over 3,000 photos, 500 comments and 100 sounds that have been shared by users.

All of the content comes from social networks such as Flickr, Facebook and Twitter set up byTurespaña, a State Administration body that is responsible for promoting Spain as a tourist destination abroad. Their intention is to continue feeding content to the application this way. The idea, according to Guerrero, is for visiting Spain “to be an experience, and that the application is used before, during and after the trip”.  To ensure that the application is treated this way, no commercial contacts for reservations are found in the application.

Aesthetically, the user can adjust the application to best suit to their tastes; whether they want to overwrite comments and how much time lag there should be between photos. Users can filter content easily with simple touch controls and choose destinations by selecting the element that they feel most identified with: water, earth, air or fire. If you click a photo twice a side menu appears with various options allowing you to filter by regions or categories that you are interested in such as: art and culture, sports and nature, lifestyle, food and drink, or sun and beaches.

Who is the application for?

I Need Spain is for anyone who is thinking about traveling to Spain or just want to learn more. It will provide you with an authentic view by those who have visited this marvelous country!