The Touristic Sector in the 5G Technology Era: The 5G-TOURS Project Approach

5G mobile networks are designed to fulfill very stringent requirements and support new vertical use cases. This transition to a vertical oriented delivery model will have a strong impact in the touristic sector. In this context, the “touristic city node” of 5G-TOURS, built in the city of Turin, aims at exploiting the potential of the media vertical. The objective is to develop an innovative tourism concept based on complementary and linked trials for five specific use cases. The trials will promote an overall integrated indoor/outdoor immersive experience to the visitors using any possible device, enhancing the accessibility to the technology, especially for disadvantaged and disabled people. They will also utilize 5G to drive “remote tourism” based on augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) experiences and bridge the gap between the physical and virtual worlds for tourism. This paper provides an overview of the 5G technology deployed in the touristic node, explaining the different services to be provided and discussing the need of 5G technology to support this vision. This work also assesses the business potential of each of the considered use cases, corroborating their potential in the context of future network services.