On a typical December day, visitors arrive at the Smartel, one of the largest hotels in Ahausa city of 40,000 inhabitants in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany.
Pulling their wheeled suitcases and with mobile phones in hand, guests are ready to scan a QR code on a terminal screen located at the entrance.
Instead of being greeted by a receptionist, arriving guests must use their smartphones to navigate the lodge. These devices not only open doors but also control the heating and lighting of the room, since there are no switches.
Cleaning robots hum silently in the hallway and lobby. The only humans you may encounter occasionally are the kitchen staff who replenish the breakfast buffet.
Peter Sommer He explains that in the past the Smartel was called Ratshotel Residenz and it was the largest lodge in the city. Sommer, travel guide for Good Metropolis Ahaus, says the building’s glorious past came to an end in the early 2000s.
After struggling to find a new owner, Ahaus-based digitization company Tobit decided in 2017 to change the lodge’s fortunes by modernizing the building and equipping its 44 rooms with the latest smart home technology developed by one of its subsidiaries, Chayns.
QR codes abound in the “smartest city”
What is striking in this medium-sized German city is the large number of blue and white circular stickers with QR codes attached to practically everything. With the Chayns logo, they can be found on restaurant tables, hotel doors and riverboats, as well as on rental bikes, supermarket shelves and even on casino game tables. city park. They provide an easy way to digitally reserve, pay and unlock many amenities.
At the end of 2024, Ahaus was crowned the smartest rural municipality in Germany following the national competition “Digital Places 2024” organized by the Deutschland — Land der Ideen (Germany — Land of Concepts) initiative.
The government-sponsored campaign aims to improve Germany’s international visibility as a hub for concepts and innovation and is supported by business and civil society.
The award-winning Ahaus was praised for integrating multiple applications into a single platform that is easy to access with an application that requires a single registration with banking and contact details.
Digitalization to stop urban decline in Germany
For Margarete, a carer from nearby Velen, the Ahaus experience provides a glimpse of what the future could be like in her hometown. He accompanied us on the guided tour and regrets that in Many You won’t even find a local supermarket anymore. If you want to go out to dinner you have to make a reservation days in advance.
So-called urban decline is a problem for many small cities in Germany due to population loss, economic stagnation and lack of investment. Small shops and cinemas are disappearing, while hospitality businesses struggle to find staff and customers. Could a massive investment in digitalization stop the silent death of these communities?
At Ahaus it is no longer a problem to find enough people to work, for example, at tourist attractions. People are no longer needed at the boat rental service near the city’s baroque water castle.
Bicycles and umbrellas can also be rented digitally, as are meals at the local TKWY restaurant. There, a video screen shows who is next to pick up your food after you’ve ordered it on the Chayns app.
Margarete finds this “a little impersonal” and says she would miss the casual chat with the waiters. “But efficient,” replies Peter, our tour guide, and says that now the staff can concentrate on cooking. Knowledge of the German language “doesn’t matter” either, he says, because the food can be ordered in different languages.
Cashless and conflict free
At Ahaus bars and pubs, staffing needs are also minimal, as bartenders and waiters only serve what customers have paid for in advance online, eliminating disputes over bills and age verification. User data is stored in your Chayns account.
According to Tobit, almost 80% of all Ahaus hospitality businesses use the Chayns app, whose service has grown to include farmers, sports clubs and other service providers. They use Tobit’s digital network to sell products or grant cashless access to facilities 24 hours a day.
In a pub called The Unbrexit, the waiter Sven Klawikowski still brings drinks and food to the tables. But you no longer need to take orders, process payments, or check in with customers to see what else they need. With ten tables to look after, this saves enough time to equal the workload of a full shift, he says. Additionally, you can afford to work just four days a week and still receive your full weekly salary.
He bar wall pathNearby is one of the formerly empty properties in Ahaus that Tobit bought to test its technology. Inside the bar, a stock market ticker scrolls continuously across a huge screen.
While having a drink, customers can invest in stocks, ETFs, cryptocurrencies or commodities. But this offer is just for fun as it is just a digital reality game with no actual money.
“We can test new technologies and make them accessible to other cities,” says Sommer.
Local currency to store money in the city.
Benedikt Hommöle, Director of Advertising and Marketing and Tourism at Ahaus, believes that technology companies like Tobit find it easier to test their beta projects in the city because the municipality and its residents agree. “We accept the concept of a living laboratory. We are guinea pigs, but in exchange we have things here that others don’t have,” he explains to DW.
A frequently replicated digital concept is the so-called city bond, a native digital currency that, according to Tobit, has been emulated by more than 70 municipalities.
At Ahaus, vouchers are used as a welcome gift for new residents and winners of the weekly online competition. Employers also use municipal vouchers to distribute monthly subsidies to workers. They are also popular as gifts or pocket money.
However, the money can only be spent in the city and must be used within a limited time frame. “It can be used to buy dog food, buns or new tires,” Hommöle says, adding that vouchers worth close to 800,000 euros ($816,000) circulate each year.
As Ahaus is located near the German border with the Netherlands, the city is in style among Dutch tourists. At the end of our tour, Peter summer recalls a recent visit by the mayors of 10 Dutch towns and cities, known to be more open to all things digital than Germany.
Sommer says that to Germans Ahaus seems like pure science fiction. The Dutch visitors simply said: “Not bad for Germany.”
