The Galápagos Islands are home to around 25,000 residents, yet nearly 225,000 tourists visit each year. Despite the influx of tourists year-round, the 2010 census reveals that around 52 percent of residents on the Galápagos Islands live in poverty. Even though cruise ships constantly pass through the islands, tourists are only recommended typical tourist activities and do not necessarily get local insight on the islands or more importantly, how to contribute to the local economy. In addition, tourists also introduce issues that involve incoming pests and damaging the treasured ecological structure of the Galápagos Islands. Even if they were interested in looking up more information about the Galápagos, there is very limited (if any) Internet service on the islands.

There is currently no existing solution in the Galápagos Islands. Yelp and Airbnb have similar features that we are interested in, but due to the unreliable connectivity in the Galápagos Islands, tourists cannot use these applications. In addition, popular applications like Yelp usually do not contain much information for tourists in less populated places like the Galápagos.

There is a great opportunity to improve the economy and assist the residents of the Galápagos in empowering their local businesses. We plan to draw more tourists to local businesses by creating a mobile and web application that contains easily accessible information about local businesses such as dining places, entertainment, and more. The Galápagos Islands’ Chamber of Tourism will be able to add entries to the mobile/web application, and users will be able to search through the listings and explore local offerings. Because the Galápagos Islands do not have reliable internet connectivity, our application does not rely on connectivity to function. 

Instead, users will only need to connect once in order to download the mobile application before having full functionality. Users will be able to rate and leave reviews of establishments on our web and mobile applications. Small businesses will be able to advertise themselves on a big platform, and tourists will be able to truly experience the unique wonders of the Galápagos Islands. By integrating our application into the tourism industry in the Galápagos Islands, we hope to attract more tourists to small businesses owned by the Galápagos residents, which in turn will bring much-needed money into the local economy.

This application’s main goal is to provide information regarding a user’s future trip to the Galapagos Islands. Users can view recommendations for services such as food, shopping, and tourism as well as logistic recommendations such as lodging and transportation. Additionally, users can favorite these recommendations. The Galapagos Chamber of Tourism can advertise small businesses on this platform so tourists will be able to truly experience the unique wonders of the Galápagos Islands. Furthermore, there will be information provided regarding the history and science of the islands along with rules and emergency procedures for while they are visiting.

Within the Learn section, users can explore About Us, Science and Sustainability, and History. The About Us section provides important information about the admin of the app - the Chamber of Tourism in the Galapagos Islands. Science and Sustainability contain information about Galapagos flora, and fauna, how to protect them, endangered species, and new species. Lastly, the history section displays a timeline of Galapagos history, some information about the locals, and a blurb about the islands’ natural history.

We anticipate that tourists will spend more of their time using the Explore section of the application. From the main Explore page, users can either explore the "Know Before You Go" section or "Plan Your Trip". From the "Know Before You Go" page, users can explore the Language, Cultural and Social Norms, or Rules of the National Park pages. We also provide a blurb on Internet and Connectivity and the emergency number to call when in the Galapagos.

In addition, users may access the "Plan Your Trip" section. It contains information on Top Activities, Santa Cruz Island restaurants and hotels, Travel Agencies, and Transportation between islands. Within this section, we provide information commonly requested by tourists.

On the Santa Cruz restaurants, Santa Cruz hotels, Travel Agencies, and Transportation (Want to Island Hop?) pages, we give users the opportunity to explore photos, call, email, or check the website of business. They can also Favorite the item by pressing the turtle and the word "Favorite". The Favorites section will be populated with items that users Favorite throughout the four sections previously listed. As there is little to no Internet connection in the Galapagos Islands, the favorite items are stored locally on users’ phones.

In the Add Information sections, the administrator can add new hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, tourist agencies and attractions, and transportation to the database. From each page, the user is able to get to any other page using the Choose a Category selection or the sidebar links. In the Show Tables sections, the administrator is able to see what is currently in the database for each section. There is a delete button next to each entry to give the administrator control to either delete the entry or leave it as is. Our web application is not yet connected to the mobile application. Once it’s connected, the admin users will be able to make updates to the entire mobile app through the web application.

Our mobile application interface was developed using React Native. React Native has plenty of opportunities for code reuse as well as a large community of developers. Having a large community makes information more available for help when a team member was to run into issues when implementing our solution. Additionally, an iOS and Android application can be created simultaneously, therefore saving time and money. Finally, a team member has experience in using React Native, hence eliminating a decent amount of time that would be spent learning a new language.

For our application, administrators needed to be able to update information regarding tourist services. In order to do this, we had to have a database to store the information. For this, we chose to create a MySQL database using AWS. AWS was useful because it required minimal setup and did not require server infrastructure to power apps with data. Furthermore, it has the potential to store a copious amount of data.

We chose an easy, intuitive, and aesthetic design for our interface. Our target users include tourists, locals, and anyone interested in learning more about the Galapagos. The potentially broad spectrum of users requires an intuitive interface. As a result, we only included a few choices on each page to reduce potential frustrations or confusion. Most importantly, we wanted different pieces of the application to really reflect the Galapagos Islands, which we considered greatly when choosing colors and icons.

We have used React Native to develop the mobile application and React for any web component that may be used by admin to check on and input information. React Native allows for cross-platform usability and React is a responsive language that allows users to access the admin site on a Desktop or mobile phone. We originally started using Firebase Real-Time Database. We found some issues with using this and were only able to use it for one month. It required us to add strong security rules and even after doing so, it would not allow us to access the database. After struggling with this for a while, we decided to switch to MySQL which we were a little more familiar with. There was still a learning curve with using this database but we found more online resources to help us than we did with our original database.

One future step would be more interface testing. Due to COVID-19, we were prevented from traveling to the Galapagos Islands to conduct user testing. However, we would still like to collect more feedback to ensure that our mobile app’s interface is easy to use. We plan to deploy the app on a mobile app store so that test users assigned by the Galapagos Chamber of Tourism can send our team more feedback. We will collect the feedback and create new iterations of the mobile application. 

As of right now, the administrator can add to the database, and see what is currently in the database but cannot delete or update existing data from the admin site, so this functionality is one of our main next steps. Additionally, we would like to find a more convenient way for the administrator to add a picture to the database with an upload file option. Finally, we are going to host our website on AWS and make sure that we have a password-protected login for the administrators. Once these are completed, we would like to do some more interface testing and implement final changes based on the feedback we receive.

Throughout the past few months, our team has been developing a mobile application named GalapaGo! dedicated to showcasing the wonderful local businesses that the Galapagos Islands have to offer. In addition, we have created a web application where admins from the Galapagos Islands Chamber of Tourism can add or edit the contents of the mobile application. We hope that future visitors to the Galapagos Islands will take advantage of GalapaGo! to explore and discover local restaurants, inns, attractions, and more. Through the GalapaGo! the project, we gained not only technical skills but also more universal knowledge of the challenges faced by other communities.

We feel fortunate to have the resources and ability to use our skills to build an application that benefits others. The project, overall, forced us to empathize outside of the norms of our personal lives to adequately build the applications. While our mobile application is an excellent way for encouraging visitors to explore local businesses in the Galapagos Islands, tourists must know that GalapaGo! exists for our app to be effective. Thus, an important aspect of our app would also be some kind of advertisement to get the word out and have people download our app.