Considering the speed of expansion of the city, the number of attractions that need to be regularly updated in the tourist maps is also increasing. That is why, in addition to the printed one, we also created a digital map of Novi Sad and Fruška gora, on which, in the first phase, nearly 600 points of the most important tourist attractions, historical and religious objects, cultural institutions, wineries, restaurants, hiking trails, picnic areas, accommodation and catering facilities, public transport, with descriptions, photos and navigation to each destination are marked. The same map can be found on the official website of the Tourism Organization of the City of Novi Sad, adapted for the needs of interactive displays and use on mobile phones. The next phase of development will be focused on a portal dedicated to the digital map (which will be updated in real time), city events, as well as specific and attractive parts of the city, and the plan is to connect all of this with the city’s internet storefronts in multiple locations. The goal of this type of presentation of Novi Sad is to monitor the development tendencies of the city itself towards the largest possible number of tourists, who gravitate to the cities that are becoming “smart” cities.
“Smart” cities allow visitors to use technology to plan what they will visit in a very simple way on the spot, or what specialties they will try. With such an experience of the destination, they themselves become the best presenters of the city they visited.
The official website of the Tourism Organization of the City of Novi Sad provides potential visitors, as well as citizens of Novi Sad, with accurate and verified information and texts about all segments of the city’s tourism. Through these activities, the Tourism Organization of the City of Novi Sad does everything to present Novi Sad as an authentic tourist, business, entertainment and cultural-historical destination, both on the domestic and international scene.
Over the period, the site has evolved into one of the sites that, with its references, sets the standards for the internet presentation of the destination. It is designed in a modular way, in order to be able to be upgraded at any moment and to respond to trends and technological advances.
One of the indicators of the site’s progress is the space it occupies on the servers, which is 30 gigabytes. There is, among other things, in addition to the code that is the primary part of the site, also its complete multimedia, which is one of the most important parameters for displaying the destination as desirable and interesting. The entire team works on the selection of the best professional photos, with the common goal of providing the website visitor with a unique visual experience and desire to visit the destination.
The site currently has 6,000 pages dedicated to parts of the city and its attractive locations, and in addition there are: digital tools, news, list of events, cultural institutions, historical data, booking tours, etc.
According to data from Google Analytics, which has been tracking visits to the site for the last three years, when we compare the period for 2021 and 2022, it has increased by more than 40 per cent. In 2021, we had 291,836 visits, and in the following year, 418,533 visits. In the current year, from January to July, we had 202,145 visits to the site. The largest visits are recorded in the months after the annual holidays and in the periods when the manifestation season begins, as well as in the period when campaigns of the Tourism Organization of the City of Novi Sad are active in combination with (pre)holiday euphoria, which is also visible on the streets of Novi Sad.
Written by: Vojislav Petrov
