Lorient uses cell phones

For two years, the municipality of Lorient uses data provided by operator Orange to measure the number of visitors to the city centre.

Excellent analysis tool

Thanks to an agreement concluded in 2019 with the operator Orange, the municipality of Lorient can obtain valuable data on how its conglomerate actually operates. In particular, in order to measure the number of people in the city center. On site, Audélor’s city planning agency studies the flows revealed by the local use of mobile phones. Thus, the municipality can obtain reliable and revealing data on the trends that drive its circulation. So far, this analysis has enabled her to note that successive confinements in the past year have significantly reduced traffic on her downtown streets. This is about half, compared to the usual presence. However, today, regular analyzes of these statistics finally show an encouraging return from the infantry. They have increased their trips to the city center by about a quarter, compared to the turbulent period of 2020. During the period between January and September 2021. In practice, this increase is mainly due to young visitors, whose average age is no more than 24 year.

Very few foreign visitors

In addition, statistics obtained from Orange show that 87% of registered visitors are of Breton origin. In fact, and more precisely, geographically speaking, we know that 80% of them came from Morbihan. On the other hand, the presence of foreign tourists in Lorient does not even reach 3%. Also, visitors from remote areas are still scarce. Except for the festive period of the Interceltique de Lorient Festival. Indeed, this event temporarily attracts many vacationers to the south of Brittany.

Very useful data for companies

The benefit of this study provided by Orange mobile data, thanks to its relay antennas, is that it is freely available to Lorient residents. Thus, thanks to this information about the flows that cross the municipality, local merchants can interact and adapt to current trends. Lorient recently clarified that the collected items are completely anonymous. Additionally, this attendance study only considers lanes lasting more than half an hour downtown. By analyzing this information, Lorient joined the operational situation of other local authorities. Among others, Chamonix, which also uses the information provided by the use of mobile phones to monitor attendance.