Scottish Islands Passport

The Challenge

Scotland boasts 72 inhabited, offshore islands available for visitors to enjoy all year round. A lack of awareness, however, meant that many tourists often prioritised travel to only a select few.

To encourage more widespread tourism and support sustainable economic growth across all the islands, The Highland and Islands Transport Partnership (HITRANS) therefore headed the Scottish Islands Passport project (SIP).

Needing a tool to change visitor behaviour for the better, HITRANS wanted to create a digital passport for visitors. This needed to provide not only essential information about each island, but also reward visitors with stamps to mark their visit.

Our Solution

In line with HITRANS’ vision, we created an app that acted not only as a pocket guide to the islands but also tapped into visitors’ innate desire to achieve and collect through a geo-triggered stamp collecting feature.

Presented in a digital passport format, visitors are offered the opportunity to collect up to 73 passport stamps, each representing an island visited. Stamps are awarded while in-location, or retrospectively after a trip, and are designed to give visitors a sense of achievement and encourage further travel.

Stamp features include:

• 70+ stamps available to collect across 3 different geographical regions
• Automated and manual stamp unlocking with geo-fence technology and QR codes
• A digital showcase for displaying the users' collected stamps
• Stamp faces designed by local artists
• Stories in Gaelic and English attached to each stamp, providing additional information about the island
• An interactive map display to show locations of nearby stamps

The Outcome

Since its launch, the digital passport to the islands has not only been an important tool in the Scottish Island Passport initiative but has been used by thousands of visitors to the islands and garnered substantial national attention in one year alone.

Most notably, both local and international visitors alike have seized the opportunity to collect passport stamps, with over 1000 being unlocked at the time of writing.

Visitors from around the world can now not only make better-informed decisions when planning their visit to the islands but can also take a digital memento home with them, and be inspired to return.