The company worked with Adelya, a software company that specializes in NFC loyalty and CRM services. The Marseille city-pass lets visitors use a single pass to take public transportation, access museums and city attractions and benefits from discounts at Marseille local stores.

“Marseille has been selected as the European Capital of Culture for 2013,” said Maxime Tissot, director of Marseille Tourist Office, France. “More and more visitors are coming each year to visit the city and the French Riviera, and it is vital to provide them with an efficient city-pass.

“The new generation city-pass provides the right interactivity for the visitors – a single card bundling transportation and attraction – and the right visibility for the Tourist Office – on the spot reporting, we know who our visitors are, what attractions they prefer, we can communicate after their visit and engage they to come back,” she said.

“The longer term strategy was to use NFC technology so with the availability of NFC mobiles, our visitors could use a mobile city-pass.”

Mobile to go
When consumers buy the NFC-enabled city pass, the visitor profile is associated with the city-pass such as names, email and opt-in, so tracking becomes easy and efficient.

During city exploration, visitors can use the city-pass on either NFC readers or mobiles phones.

Additionally, through the new NFC-enabled city pass, the Tourist Office & Convention Bureau can browse real-time reporting and analysis on visitors and attractions.

“First we only provide NFC city-pass since December,” Ms. Tissot said. “We are officially launching the visitor season in April together with the sunshine.

“We are also present at local fair and events,” she said. “As an example, we partnered this week with the World Water Forum and we personalized the Marseille city-pass to the event.

“We sold 2000 city-card branded World Water Forum this week.”

Evolution of NFC
Offering an NFC-enabled city pass is a smart move for the Marseille Tourist Office & Convention Bureau.

Consumers can hold all their information in one device instead of paying for items separately.

NFC technology is growing at a rapid speed and will prove to be an effective form of payment in the coming years.

“Being in top 3 cities in France, it is vital for Marseille to offer the best to its visitors,” Ms. Tissot said.

“Soon NCF mobile phones will be around and we could immediately switch from NFC cards to mobile city-pass,” she said.

Final Take
Rimma Kats is associate editor on Mobile Commerce Daily, New York