I’m interested in including tourist information points where there are staff present but not in a building or office. They are either under an umbrella or just standing in a particular spot.
The use case specifically that I have in mind is Tourism Volunteers in the City of Melbourne. They are people stationed at specific points during all or most days of the week.
There is tourism=information but are there any additional tags that might be helpful to include? Other than operator=Melbourne City Council and operating hours.
kind of matches but kind of borderline and kind of not really
I would also add note=see https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/non-building-tourist-information-points/139314 description=staff present but not in a building or office indoor=no
I would also take care, if I would map such stuff, to check whether they stopped appearing and then delete POI.
Before considering to add them as a feature, I would first add an attribute to the facility they are serving, similar to supervised=yes
Is it this? Seems comparable to whether police are always stationed somewhere, which should be avoided. https://whatson.melbourne.vic.gov.au/visitor-info/city-ambassadors
Thank you both for your replies. I don’t think that either really works in this instance. Are there any other suggestions?
These are fixed points where there is usually a physical item - e.g. an umbrella - with people stationed there to provide tourist information during certain days and hours of the week. They are not necessarily associated with a particular facility or building and they are not vendors selling anything.
I think it is useful to include this feature in OSM but I also understand if the consensus is not to include it given it is not a permanent physical feature.
I think tourism=information and outdoor=yes are simple and fit perfectly, along with the correct opening_hours=* and operator=*. Key:outdoor - OpenStreetMap Wiki reads:
The outdoor=* key is used to indicate that the feature it is attached to is - fully or partially - outdoors.
However, are these “information points” really permanent enough to be included in the map? Do they always stay in the exact same spot? Can they simply be in, say, a park, but every day be in a different spot, wherever they feel like there is more foot traffic?
And even if they stay in the exact same spot, for how long do they stay? Only during the summer? Only during Christmas? Especially for seasonal tourist places. I don’t think the city of Ibiza for example would bother doing this during November.
The biggest problem would be if someone on vacation in a place, sees this “tourist point”, maps it, leaves the place, but the next week these tourist points disappear but they stay on the map, and someome would have to survey and research if they’re still there or not.
All of this should be clearly verified and tagged in opening_hours=* and seasonal=*.
Fundamentally I find street_vendor= to be not ideally named either, as it seems to suggest it can be for any vendor on street. Furthermore, such vendors don’t have to be on “street”, but can be on some grounds, sheltered, or even indoors. To both improve that, and for your question here, it could be eg physically_present==regular / =scheduled / =recurrent etc.
For a tourism= feature, this needs to be considered with how tourism=information have been proposed to be split into simply information= for signs and boards passively providing info, and tourism= features actively providing help, guidance, and answers with much more services and facilities (viz =information_office , =visitor_centre ). From the official intro, you can “get personal assistance with directions, public transport enquiries”. suggesting it can cater to travelers in general, not only “tourist” info.
At the same time, receptions, concierges, service counters, enquiry desks, etc have all been discussed. information= has a few “help” uses.
Indeed, even one with a dozen has been proposed Proposal:Helpdesk - OpenStreetMap Wiki
The author mentions public_transport= , showing how tourism= is frequently not felt as satisfactory even for travel use, not to mention non-travelers. Aside from malls, another case is in airports, which is often not considered “public transport”. In response, man_made=sign is one such solution. =helpdesk seems to suggest a fixed, usually staffed counter. It can be renamed to eg =help_point for your “mobile” case. This does need to distinguished from those for rescue, aid, and assistance, eg emergency=disaster_help_point for needs of victims.
That being said, it seems fine to create eg amenity=help_point , but it needs to be coordinated with others as amenity=reception_*
Need to check what the 8 are used for amenity=help_point | Tags | OpenStreetMap Taginfo