The Smartel is not just one of the largest hotels in Aachen, the city of 40,000 inhabitants in North Rhine-Westphalia. It is also one of the “smartest” accommodations in the world, a place where almost everything can be done with a QR-code and a mobile phone.

Smartel guests scan a QR code with their phone to enter the hotel, control the heating and lights in their room – without having to consult with anyone at the reception, or fumbling with the various switches in the room , since there isn’t even one.

The hotel has also “hired” cleaning robots. Therefore, the only people that anyone staying at Smartel can meet are the kitchen staff who will be changing the breakfast buffet.

Peter Sommer, a tour guide from Ahaus, says that until the early 2000s the Smartel was called the Ratshotel Residenz and was the largest hotel in the city. In 2017 the digitization company Tobit, based in Aachen, decided to modernize the building and equip its 44 rooms with the latest smart-home technology products – manufactured by Tobit subsidiary Chayns.

Ahaus, the most “intelligent” city

The striking thing about Ahaus is the huge number of blue and white stickers with QR codes that are everywhere in the city: on restaurant tables, doors, bicycles, supermarket shelves and elsewhere, facilitating the everyday life of citizens.

At the end of 2024, Aachen was recognized as the “smartest” community in the German province in the competition “Digital Places 2024”, organized by the initiative Deutschland – Land der Ideen (“Germany – The Land of Ideas”). The campaign of the German government aims to boost Germany’s international visibility as a center of ideas and innovation.

Ahaus was therefore awarded for the integration of various applications into a single platform, which anyone can access through the app after a simple registration process with the user’s contact and bank details.

Will digitization stop the decline?

Margarete from nearby Velen believes that, through the experience offered by Ahaus, she can “peek” into what her own town could look like in the future. She is very saddened by the fact that there are no local supermarkets in Velen anymore, and if she wants to go out to eat, she has to make a reservation several days in advance.

So-called urban decline is a serious problem for many small towns in Germany due to population loss, economic stagnation and lack of investment. Small shops and cinemas are disappearing, while catering businesses are finding it very difficult to find customers and staff.

Could massive investment in digitization turn the tide?

In Aachen, for example, finding people to work in tourist attractions is no longer an issue. Most things can be done online, like renting bikes or buying food.

For Margarete, all this is “somewhat impersonal” and she confesses that she will miss chatting with the waiters. At the same time, “they are also efficient”, as pointed out by Peter, who gives us a tour of the city.

Minimizing human contact

In the bars and pubs of Ahaus, lack of staff is also no longer a problem, since they only serve what the customers who come have already pre-paid. In addition, since user data is stored in their Chayn account, disputes about the age of customers and whether they can drink alcohol are also avoided.

And according to Tobit, around 80% of all catering businesses in Ahaus use Chayn’s app, which has been developed to include farmers, sports clubs and other service providers.

Sven Klavikowski, a waiter at The Unbrexit pub, still serves drinks and food to customers, but without having to take orders, accept payments, check what else guests need, which saves him a lot of time and effort.

The municipality on Tobit’s side

As Benedikt Homele, Aachen’s head of marketing and tourism, observes, tech companies like Tobit can easily test their projects in the city because the municipality and citizens are on board. “We become guinea pigs, but in return we get things that other cities don’t have,” Homele tells DW.

One of the most common digital technologies used in the city is the so-called city voucher, a local digital currency that according to Tobit has been tested in more than 70 municipalities.

In Ahaus, among other things, the vouchers are given as a welcome gift to new residents, but also to the winners of weekly online quizzes, while employers use the vouchers for the employees’ monthly bonuses. However, the money can only be spent within the city and must be used within a certain time frame.

As Aachen is close to the Dutch border, the city also has a number of Dutch tourists. At the end of the tour Peter Sommer recalls the recent visit of the mayors of ten Dutch towns and cities, which are equally open to digitization – more so than many Germans. Because as Sommer says, for the Germans Ahaus really does look like science fiction.

Edited by: Giorgos Passas