Municipia, part of the Engineering Group, has released digital travel-guide applications, in two pilot regions of the European SMART ERA project: the Devetaki Plateau in Bulgaria and East Herzegovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The free apps aim to bring two of Europe’s lesser-known rural areas on the digital tourism map, while enriching the project’s shared data platform with local tourism data.

Two rural areas on the edges of Europe’s tourism map, but rich in landscapes, heritage and community stories, have a new digital companion. Under the Horizon Europe project SMART ERA for the smart innovation of rural areas, Municipia SpA — part of the Engineering Group — has developed and released a digital mobile travel-guide application, for two of the project’s pilot territories: the Devetaki Plateau in northern Bulgaria and East Herzegovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The app

The two available versions of the mobile app work as multilingual, interactive travel guides, offering curated itineraries, maps of points of interest and multimedia content on the natural and cultural heritage of each area. Visitors can explore each territory through informative texts, audio storytelling, videos, images and photo galleries, using the apps both to plan a trip and to discover places at their own pace while travelling.

Both apps are now free to download from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store:

Bulgaria — Discover Devetaki Plateau: Android | iOS

East Herzegovina — East Herzegovina Trails: Android | iOS

In northern Bulgaria, Discover Devetaki Plateau presents a landscape shaped by karst formations, caves, biodiversity and wide-open rural scenery. Its routes include the main ‘Devetaki Plateau’ itinerary, ‘Karst of the Devetaki Plateau’, ‘Gazing at the Beauty of the Devetaki Plateau’, and ‘In Between the Bronze of Time and the Mill of the Future’. Together, they connect geological heritage, scenic viewpoints, prehistoric traces, traditional rural life and contemporary perspectives, helping visitors engage with the plateau’s places and stories.

“The ‘Discover the Devetaki Plateau’ application is the result of hard work and material collection by the Devetaki Plateau Association team, as well as fruitful cooperation with specialists from Municipia S.p.A. The result is a modern, user-friendly product that beautifully highlights the charm and natural beauty of our region. It has been very well received, and I hope that in the future it will contribute to the region’s development and enhance the well-being of the local community in Devetaki Plateau.”

Iva Taralezhkova, Devetaki Plateau Association

In East Herzegovina, East Herzegovina Trails brings together villages, cultural landmarks, local flavours and mountain landscapes through a set of thematic journeys. ‘East Herzegovina Uncovered’ offers a broad introduction to the region; the ‘Cheese and Honey Trail of East Herzegovina’ highlights artisanal food traditions and local producers; ‘Herzegovina Through the Ages’ links ancient monasteries, medieval towns and historic sites; ‘The Most Beautiful Village of East Herzegovina’ leads visitors to Bratač; and ‘Between Hearths and Lakes: A Journey Through Kalinovik’ explores traditional households and mountain lakes.

“East Herzegovina Trails is about much more than discovering places on a map. It is an invitation to meet the people who keep our villages alive, to taste food that carries generations of knowledge, and to discover the landscapes, traditions and stories that shape the identity of East Herzegovina. By connecting small producers, rural households, cultural heritage and nature through these thematic journeys, we want visitors to experience our region at their own pace, while helping create new opportunities for the people who have chosen to live, work and build their future in rural areas of East Herzegovina”.

Milica Kovačević, President, Slow Food Trebinje Hercegovina

“The two apps are the result of a participatory design process developed with local partners and communities. Through co-design, we shaped the user experience, the narrative structure and the content architecture around the identity of each territory, making routes, places and stories easy to discover. This collaborative approach has been essential to creating experiences that are intuitive for visitors and meaningful for the people who live in and care for these areas”.

Antonella Montagner, Municipia – Application Operations Specialist, Tourism, Culture & Welfare

Innovation packages and pilot cases

The Municipia’s digital solution is one of the technological components developed and integrated under SMART ERA, and forms part of the Smart Innovation Packages co-designed with each pilot community. By digitising local trails, points of interest and cultural and gastronomic heritage, the tool is designed to increase the visibility of these areas, grow visitor numbers and support the income of small-scale local producers, while involving young people and local women in digitising heritage content.

The selection of these two territories reflects SMART ERA’s objective to address rural area’s challenges and to foster innovation. Bulgaria records the lowest GDP per capita of all EU Member States in purchasing power standards — 68% of the EU average in 2025 — while Bosnia and Herzegovina, a non-EU country, reached a GDP per capita of around €8,050 in 2024, against an EU average of €41,620 (Eurostat).

The nine villages of the Devetaki Plateau and the rural municipalities around Trebinje and Republic of Srpska are working to respond to challenges such as demographic change and youth outmigration by strengthening local capacities, improving the visibility of their heritage and creating new opportunities for residents, visitors and local businesses.

“Municipia has translated the needs and ambitions of the pilot communities into a robust, accessible digital solution. Our role has been to design and develop the technological framework that brings together itineraries, interactive maps, points of interest and multimedia content, while ensuring integration with the wider SMART ERA digital ecosystem. Technology thus becomes an enabling infrastructure for making rural assets more visible, accesible and connected”.

Luca Bonofiglio, Municipia – Delivery Manager, Tourism, Culture & Welfare

The Data Platform

Beyond guiding visitors, the Municipia’s digital solution is connected to the SMART ERA Data Platform developed by Engineering, a GDPR-compliant solution designed to manage the entire data value chain, from data collection and harmonisation to publication and sharing. Built according to the Privacy by Design principle, the platform enables the secure exchange of information in near real time. The resulting data supports advanced dashboards and analytics tools, helping local communities, policymakers, and researchers better understand tourism flows and monitor key rural smartness indicators such as insights about the most itineraries viewed, the most point of interests enjoyed, etc.

The SMART ERA team thanks all consortium partners for their collaboration throughout the design, development and testing of the digital mobile apps, and encourages project partners and pilot communities to support the launch through their own communication and social media channels.

Cover photo Taylor Brandon