Just about 3 months ago, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB)’s collaboration with Google made touring local landmarks more interesting with the power of AR was apparently well-received enough to call for another round of enhancement, bringing more locations and better user experience in this latest update.
Available later this summer, let me get to the main point first because you’ll most likely want to know the new locations first so here they are:
- Somerset Precinct
- Supertree Groove
- Chinatown Visitor Centre
- Sentosa Sensoryscape
- and more…
The virtual assistant Merli will also continue to fulfill its role of the app’s main host of the app but Google has made things even easier to use because these AR experiences will soon be part of the Google Maps mobile app that seamlessly enables the process of “Follow map guidance -> Arrived at scene -> AR experience ON”.
STB also called other tourism stakeholders in Singapore to join in the fun and develop their own AR-based experiences as well from big corps running retail malls over at Orchard Road’s shopping belt down to local heritage businesses in Chinatown alongside popular attractions spots and museums. With that, STB is expecting about 30 POIs to have their AR service up and running soon.
In regards to how to get access to it, just fire up Google Lens in Maps and point at something with your camera and in just a bit all the necessary information is going to pop up, including the AR content if the POI has them readied.
