Planned phone apps meant to help navigate S.F.

Summertime Santa Fe visitors may want to bring their “app-etite.”

The city plans to develop and launch a pair of new smartphone applications this year, one that will help tourists navigate the maze of places to go downtown and another to provide youth the opportunity for free visits to arts and cultural locales.

Those free app-store offerings will join the $3.99 Margarita Trail Passport app, the smartphone version of the popular margarita-special program launched by the city in 2016, which has accrued “a couple hundred” downloads since its release last month, said Randy Randall, executive director of Tourism Santa Fe.

The Santa Fe general information and wayfinding app — which does not yet have a name — will cull information on restaurants, museums, hotels, shops and galleries from the city’s tourism site, santafe.org. Downloaders will be able to use the app as a sort of localized search engine.

Plug in “boots,” for instance, Randall says, and the app will return a map or a list of Santa Fe locations that sell them, in order of distance from your location.

“It will really help our visitors get from here to there, wherever they are,” he said. So what makes this any better than Google? For one, Randall said, local businesses’ “specials,” discounts or deals, will appear as push notifications as users stray into the proximity of the store or restaurant (this functionality may be toggled on or off, Randall said).

There’ll be no charge for local businesses that want to set up that sort of notification deal, he added.

City Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth, at a committee hearing last week, asked Randall about the potential benefit for the local consumer. Randall said the special discounts will be there for app downloaders of any ZIP code.

“The focus is on the visitor, but it’s definitely available for the resident,” he said.

Even better: The app will include information about parking availability in city garages and — yes — nearby bathrooms.

“This will help make Santa Fe a user-friendly place,” Randall said, using a favored term of new Mayor Alan Webber.

Both new apps will be compatible with Apple and Android products, according to draft contracts.

The other app in the pipeline is a modernized version of the Santa Fe Youth Culture passport, a program that allows young people — and a guardian — free access to a few dozen participating arts and culture organizations.

Debra Garcia y Griego, director of the Santa Fe Arts Commission, said some 500 people annually turn in the

paper passports (there are prizes at stake), but the digitized version would help the city track which participants go where and how often.

Development of the wayfinder is expected to cost $36,500; the youth culture app, according to a city memo, would cost $40,000. Annual hosting and maintenance fees will cost another $2,188 for each.

The app contracts await City Council approval. Randall said he expects them to be delivered by July.

“Maybe sooner,” he said.

Contact Tripp Stelnicki at 505-4287626 or tstelnicki@sfnewmexican. com.