With the so-called Local Guides, Google has created a kind of platform for virtual travel guides, who actively collect, contribute, confirm or update information about Points of Interest (POIs) and activities to improve the underlying data.

Google already uses the contributed data to improve their services and it can be expected that users will be able to access even better personalized recommendations for restaurants or places of interest in the future, based on these data. This will of course not only appeal to locals, but also to tourists.

We ask ourselves whether a service of this kind would also be possible on the principles of Open Source and Open Data. What are the challenges? What publicly accessible data sources would be potentially helpful and what concrete benefits would they generate in this context? How can we ensure high quality for the data that all users update together and make sure that the underlying data are accessible for everyone? Convince us in an innovative concept of your ideas for an alternative to Google Local Guides.