As Philadelphia prepares for a summer packed with World Cup matches, America’s 250th celebrations and more than a million visitors, North Philly native Zaire Harris wants to make sure tourists don’t experience the city like outsiders.
The indie game developer launched PhillyHub, an app that acts as a one-stop shop to plan activities, meals and transit while visiting Philadelphia.
“It’s like having your own personal Philadelphian in your pocket.”
Zaire Harris, Phillyhub
The City of Philadelphia already developed an events app earlier this year to guide visitors through the activities coming up this summer, but what makes PhillyHub different is that it includes more than just events and offers a personal touch, according to Harris.
“It’s like having your own personal Philadelphian in your pocket that can point you into any kind of vibe that you want to catch,” he told Technical.ly.
With seven languages available to choose from, PhillyHub’s homepage features an explore page that lists monuments, museums, parks and other sites around the city. Some of the sites listed are classic Philly tourism spots, but others are personal recommendations, Harris said.
The list also points users to local places to eat, practical services like banks, convenience stores, gas stations and public bathrooms, and community orgs to spotlight volunteer opportunities and nonprofits around the city.
For visitors looking for even more to do, the platform also features an events page that automatically pulls in new listings from sites like Visit Philly and Discover PHL.
Users can then decide whether to share their location data and, if they opt in, they’ll also be able to see which attractions are nearby — and details on how to get to them.
The transit tab shows information about SEPTA routes, specifically highlighting how people can travel to the stadiums for the World Cup games. It runs on live data from SEPTA to provide arrival information about trains and buses, according to Harris.
A digital tour guide
Harris’ main inspiration to tap into this summer’s events to launch PhillyHub was not just the $1 billion in economic impact the city expects to gain, but also his son, who loves soccer and was excited for the World Cup to come to town.
Plus, after his experience fielding requests from friends visiting Philly, Harris built the tool to offer that same local guidance at scale via a personal digital tour guide for tourists.
“When I like to travel, I always love to stop and look at the historical facts,” Harris said, “or I like to tap in with someone that I know and get a local’s eye view of the place that I’m visiting.”
Mostly a self-taught developer, it took Harris about five months to pull together the version that exists today, he said.
Harris is the founder of indie game development company Lil Pill Studios. He taught himself how to code and learned how to build games, which gave him the skill foundation needed to put together a more involved project like PhillyHub, he said.
After releasing his last game, Harris wanted to use his coding skills to build something specific to Philly for his next project, he said. He wanted the app to be representative of all the cultures and history in Philadelphia, so visitors had the chance to learn something new.
For the most part, the app is built so that it updates on its own, but Harris can go in and add new events or attractions when he wants without having to completely update the platform, he said.
There is a free web version of the app with the monuments and events features, but the full app is $2 to purchase on the App Store.
“My hope for [visitors],” Harris said, “is just to get a fraction of the love for the city that I have accumulated over the years.”
