Ahaus: Visiting Germany's 'smartest' Town

For more than a decade, Ahaus has served as a real-world laboratory for urban digitalization. Each year, around 1,000 tourists visit the town, now officially recognized as Germany's smartest community. On a typical day in December, visitors arrive at Smartel, one of the bigger hotels in Ahaus, a town of 40,000 inhabitants in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Pulling their rolling suitcases and with mobile phones in hand, guests are ready to scan a QR code on a terminal screen at the entrance. Rather than being greeted by a receptionist, arriving guests must use their smartphones to navigate the hotel. These devices not only open doors but also control room heating and lighting as there are no switches. In the hallway and lobby, cleaning robots are quietly humming. The only humans you may occasionally encounter are the kitchen staff replenishing the breakfast buffet. Peter Sommer explains that the Smartel was formerly named the Ratshotel Residenz, which used to be the largest hotel in town. Sommer, a travel guide from Smart City 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 turn the hotel's fortunes around by modernizing the building and equipping its 44 rooms with the latest smart-home technology that one of its subsidiaries, Chayns, develops. QR-Codes galore in the 'smartest town' What's striking in this medium-sized German town is the huge number of blue-and-white circular stickers with QR codes attached to virtually everything. Bearing the Chayns logo, they can be found on restaurant tables, hotel doors and riverboats, as well as rent-out bicycles, supermarket shelves, and even on the games cabinet in the town park. They provide an easy way to digitally book, pay for and unlock many amenities. At the end of 2024, Ahaus was crowned the smartest rural municipality in Germany following the nationwide ...