ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the critical issues associated with the introduction, implementation and operation of locative AR apps for heritage tourism in wider urban systems of provision and affordances. In particular, it focuses on the juxtaposition of AR apps with efforts to market and manage cities for visitors, and the challenges associated with simultaneously operating in both virtual and real space. In principle, AR apps for heritage tourism can be deployed as part of advanced, intelligent, data-driven approaches to tackling real-time issues as well as to address some of the more pressing challenges through ‘digital’ and ‘armchair’ tourism. In practice, some of the more pragmatic issues related to the implementation of such apps currently appear to limit their role and ability to contribute to sustainable tourism management. As Hidden Florence and the Hidden Cities programme allude, without closer integration of the digital and analogue, the real and the virtual, the original and the augmented, apps and destination are effectively hiding in plain sight from one another.
