There’s nothing worse than venturing on a family day out and finding out there’s no vegetarian food options nearby, or nowhere for Dadi-ji to rest her legs…but a new digital tourism program could change that. Namaste Westside
‘Namaste Westside’ is an AI-powered chatbot which provides everything from events and restaurant recommendations to full itineraries, all via WhatsApp and an interactive website. Available in Hindi and English, the program can also be activated with voice.
Himanshi Munshaw Luhar from Culture Kite, the multicultural consultancy firm who helped create the program, is excited to have launched ‘Namaste Westside’ at Parliament House last week.
“It’s a world class platform – there’s nothing like it that we’ve come across in Australia at this point,” she told Indian Link.
“It’s gone through lots of checks and balances, lots of tech overviews, lots of comparisons with what else is out there in the world.”
Developed by the Western Melbourne Tourism Board in partnership with six western suburbs councils and Victoria University, the program is aimed at boosting tourism to Melbourne’s west – but what sets the program apart is providing targeted support for Indian travellers.
With one in ten visitors from India coming to West Melbourne, Luhar believes it’s important to enhance the visitor experience for this fast-growing market.
“With such a huge cohort of Indian community living in Western Melbourne, they’ve got constantly got visitors staying with them and they’re taking them around. It’s a way for them to map out itineraries…for the configuration of the traveller that they are, and give them ideas,” she explains.
Drawing on research and knowledge from community consultations, Luhar says Indian visitors have unique needs, such as dietary restrictions and large multi-generational groups, which ‘Namaste Westside’ seeks to address.
“The end result is fantastic,” says Luhar, whose team worked for 18 months on the program.
“It really solves a lot of genuine problems and really looks at servicing and catering to the Indian community and the Indian tourism traveller.”
From curating low impact walking trails for mobility impaired relatives to uncovering weekend festivals for residents, ‘Namaste Melbourne’ can give customised advice depending on your circumstances – like prompting you to ‘bring a pashmina’ for Melbourne’s wind or finding something accessible by public transport.
“If you’ve been in Australia for 10-15 years, you’re going to have a couple of different sets of visitors – you might have your parents visit at one time, you might have siblings visit at another time. What you’re doing with your parents might be very different from what you’re doing with your siblings,” Luhar says.
“Using those different scenarios to create things to do or discover places takes away the time spent on research and trying to figure out what to do.”
Namaste Westside
Luhar also believes the program has something to offer residents.
“You would even find even if you’re a local and you are trying to plan a day out for the family, it will still give you suggestions… there’s a lot of recent arrivals from the last five to eight years, still exploring the regions,” she notes.
With the program now available to the public, Luhar hopes it will be embraced and encourage more visitors to discover the western suburbs.
“I think it’s a very powerful tool that can really establish itself well in the community,” she concludes.
“It will keep being tweaked, but we’ve done a lot of testing, and we really hope that it’s going to be beneficial.”
