Local Voices
Local Voices facilitates an exchange between solo travellers looking for authentic encounters and locals who want to share their experiences
A study project by Amy Binder
3rd semester, 2025/2026
Lecturers: Martin Haas, Tanja Hakl, Romina Marsico, Prof. Tsunemitsu Tanaka, Tomas Zebis
The issue
Solo tourism is steadily on the rise, and independent travel is becoming increasingly popular. More and more travellers are seeking authentic, local experiences rather than overcrowded tourist attractions. They want to gain a deeper understanding of a place’s culture and establish contacts with locals. At the same time, however, there is often a sense of unease about spontaneous encounters with strangers, which prevents many from actually acting on this desire.
On the other hand, there are locals who enjoy sharing their knowledge, experiences and perspectives on their home town, but without feeling obliged or under pressure to do so. For such an encounter to take place, it requires openness, mutual trust and a willingness to discover new perspectives on both sides.
What does Local Voices aim to achieve?
Local Voices connects solo travellers seeking authentic and spontaneous insights into foreign cultures with locals who wish to share their knowledge and personal experiences. The service facilitates informal encounters and intercultural exchange on an equal footing, creating personalised experiences rather than standardised information. In doing so, it strikes a balance between ease, spontaneity and safety, ensuring that desired interactions can take place with as little risk as possible. Collaboration with the fictional project partner Servas further builds trust, as the organisation verifies users’ identities, thereby supporting safe and self-determined interactions free from pressure to perform or time constraints.
Facilitating intercultural exchange
The application is designed as an app, so that spontaneous encounters can take place on the go at any time. It works in the same way for locals and solo travellers. Using a map, people can be selected who offer topics of interest and with whom an exchange is desired. Once a meeting has been confirmed, both parties receive all the relevant information, including the meeting point and details of the encounter. The meeting point is at the selected person’s location, and a navigation route to that location is provided at the same time.
Discussions about a specific place
If a traveller would like to find out more about a specific place, they can select it on the map. This will then display locals who can share their knowledge and experiences of that place. Conversely, locals can also find travellers who are interested in that particular place. Both users can then arrange to meet and receive all the necessary information, with the meeting taking place directly at the selected location.
Disclaimer
This is a student project combining academic and creative elements, with no commercial purpose.
The media used in the project are either licence-free, licensed or subject to academic citation rights. They are used exclusively for academic purposes within the scope of the project and its documentation in text, images and audio.