App helps you explore city offline

By Lethbridge Herald on June 10, 2025.

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Lethbridge Herald

Tourism Lethbridge has officially launched its new free Explore Lethbridge web app, a user-friendly platform with no downloads required, to help find their way through local tourist destinations.

Dominika Wojcik, senior director of communications with Tourism Lethbridge says the app is designed to be used in any device that has access to the internet, like a phone, a tablet, or a computer. 

“We did this because we know people, especially visitors, are getting a little bit of ‘app tired’ because there is an app for everything these days, so we did this with an option to pin the web app to their home screen, so it looks like an app on your phone, but without having to download it,” says Wojcik. 

She says that the app has multiple options available, which includes events and experiences for people to take part in. 

“The first experience is called ‘Sip, Taste, Explore,’ and this is a tour that takes you around the city to explore different restaurants, attractions and shops to get a feel of the city,” says Wojcik. 

She says that their goal is to continuously launch new tours and experiences over the course of the year. 

“The experiences would range from history tours, to maybe a coffee shop tour, to attractions tour, to reach people with different wants,” says Wojcik. 

She explains that as an incentive, and for something extra to engage users, the app allows them to collect points that can be redeemed at the Visitor Information Centre for some fun prizes.

“They would go to each location, and there is a button that says, ‘I’m at this location, please check me in now,’ and as long as people are using their location services, they will be able to check in and it will give them the points,” says Wojcik.   

She adds that the decision to develop a custom solution came after Tourism Lethbridge explored several existing digital platforms that ultimately failed to meet the organization’s evolving needs.

“This is a project that we worked on with Mitacs, and the University of Lethbridge. We used local students to help with building up this app, so because it was a student-led project we are still working out kinks,” says Wojcik. 

She adds that the beauty of the app being customized, is that they are working with residents to provide feedback on how to improve the app. 

“The great thing about the app is that it also provides us with valuable data about what users are doing, seeing and what they are engaging with,” says Wojcik. 

She says these data will also help them track the economic impact of tourism better, as right now they are tracking that with calculators and tools that are based on estimates of what they think people are spending. 

“Now we will be able to have a tool that shows who we brought to small businesses and attractions and how much they spent in each location,” says Wojcik. 

She adds that this is about turning exploration into impact, and it will benefit the community as whole, and it will strengthen Lethbridge as a welcoming and vibrant destination. 

“We can also curate experiences on there, if someone is bringing in an event or a conference, we can build a customized tour for them that is only accessible to their group and we can give them special prizes, and track how many engaged users we got from that,” says Wojcik. 

For more information or to start exploring, visit explorelethbridge.app