The fast pace of technical development within the tourism industry creates a gap between technology and the knowledge. While the technique tends to steer the development, the digitalization within the industry increases rapidly with lack of reflection of how different actors from the industry is included. The tourism industry has primarily concentrated on certain aspects of digitalization, such as marketing and e-commerce. The intention with this paper is therefore to fill an identified gap of knowledge about methods for enhancing visitors’ on site-experiences using digital media, where key actors in the local tourism industry and community are included. By launching the Geomedia approach within the research field in tourism studies, we are building a bridge between technology and people and connecting media with a place-based perspective. By using the so called Geomedia perspective, we focus on ‘who can communicate what at different places?’ What is represented at places and ‘whose’ places are represented (today and in the past)?
This paper focuses on an ongoing research project, where the purpose is to develop a method for site specific digital media productions. Taking our starting point in two specific tourist sites, one nature-based site and one cultural heritage site, we use the historical geography in a coordinated innovation process. We have been drawing on knowledge from various agents such as researchers, digital design developers, the public sector, tourism business and users (visitors / locals). The Geomedia perspective has thus inspired us in developing a place-based method, which will be discussed in this paper.