Good practice:

Promoting and enhancing bicycle-sharing for tourists and visitors in Thessaloniki

A new fully electric bike fleet of 200 bikes, which is dockless has been introduced in Thessaloniki. Through a mobile application, it provides pre- booking services as well as gamification services, for both promotional and data collection, recording and monitoring purposes.
The e-bike fleet contributes to the decrease of traffic and air pollution, as well as it offers the possibility to users to travel longer distances and in higher altitude areas of the city.
There are 3 different target groups: visitors/tourists, commuters and people with mobility impairments.
As for the visitors, the project aims to facilitate their travel around the city, providing e-bikes close to accommodation places and providing single-use coupons, information material and gamification services for tourism purposes.
Hotels in the city of Thessaloniki are cooperating with the bike-sharing company in order to offer bike services to their guests. Bikes can be found outside the hotels 24/7. Informational material also is offers during their stay and the staff has been trained to offer relevant information.
Also, for the first time in national level, two (2) e-bikes for people with impairments are available. To be used by visitors with mobility impairments.
This GP results from the project CHANGE funded by the National OP Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship & Innovation 2014-2020, promoting sustainable transport in Thessaloniki through the enhancement of the bike-sharing services.

The total project cost is 631.397,58 €.
14 people are working as main technical and scientific staff for 36 months

Four 4-stars and 5-stars hotels have chosen to collaborate with the bike-sharing company as they found it a great service to promote along with the hotels’ services.
Up to 50% decrease of travel time in traffic
Greater health benefits for commuters
The Greek Paraplegic Association was very pleased of the e-bikes initiative for disabled people, highlighting that parents with children with disabilities will be very interested in using the bikes.

Convincing hotels to collaborate. They seemed hesitating to engage in this activity, due to cases of an accident or theft.
The bike sharing company need to monitor constantly in case there are no bikes outside the hotels.
Keeping the target groups interested and after the project duration.

This GP enhancing the bike-sharing economy is very suitable for other cities and tourist destinations to follow, particularly in providing smart mobility, cycling facilities and accessibility for visitors, with innovative services and applications, towards smart destinations.
It is a low-cost initiative as it involves the development of a new mobile application to support a new or existing bike-sharing service or the upgrade of an existing application in order to offer specific services, as the pre-booking and gamification.
The GP addresses different type of users, including visitors, tourists even those with mobility impairments.
E-bikes can be used facilitate traveling in slopping cities and also in cities with narrow streets, such as old town centers and traditional towns.