Finding your way through a large hospital is one of those experiences that makes otherwise competent adults feel helpless. The corridors all look the same, the signage assumes you know what “Level 3 Block C Wing East” means, and asking for directions usually gets you a response that includes “past the cafeteria, turn left at the mural” from someone who’s walked the route a thousand times.

Airports aren’t much better. Connecting terminals, scattered gates, and the gnawing anxiety of a tight connection turn wayfinding into a stress amplifier. Traditional signage helps, but it has limits—especially when you’re in unfamiliar territory, rushing, or dealing with a language barrier.

AR indoor navigation is supposed to fix this. I visited three Australian sites that have deployed it in the past six months to see whether it does.

Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney

RPA rolled out an AR wayfinding system in January, covering the main campus buildings. It works through a WebAR interface—scan a QR code at any entrance, grant camera access, and your phone displays directional arrows overlaid on the real corridor in front of you.

The system uses a combination of visual positioning (the camera recognises specific architectural features and signage to determine where you are) and Bluetooth beacons installed throughout the campus. The beacons handle areas where visual tracking struggles, like identical-looking corridors.

First impression: it works remarkably well in the main thoroughfares. The arrows are stable, positioned correctly on the floor ahead of you, and update smoothly as you walk. Reaching the cardiology outpatient clinic from the main entrance—a journey that involves two building transitions and a level change—took about 6 minutes with AR guidance. Without it, using only wall signage, I took a wrong turn and needed 12 minutes.

Where it struggles is in the older sections of the hospital where corridors are narrow and lighting is inconsistent. The visual tracking lost its position twice, requiring me to rescan a QR code to re-anchor. The Bluetooth beacons picked up some slack, but with reduced accuracy—the arrows were in roughly the right direction but drifted a metre or so from the actual path.

Patient feedback has apparently been positive, particularly among visitors and outpatients unfamiliar with the campus. Staff use it less, obviously, since they know where they’re going. The real value is reducing the number of people wandering lost through clinical areas, which is both a patient experience issue and a security concern.

Melbourne Airport, Terminal 3

Melbourne Airport’s AR wayfinding covers the international terminal and went live in late 2025. It’s integrated into the existing Melbourne Airport app, which means it’s app-based rather than WebAR—you need the app installed to use it.

The integration with flight data is the standout feature. Enter your flight number, and the AR navigation takes you from your current location directly to your gate, via any required stops like immigration, customs, or duty free. It updates in real time if your gate changes.

Tracking accuracy is excellent in the modern terminal building. High ceilings, distinctive architecture, and consistent lighting give the visual positioning system plenty to work with. The arrows are stable and precise—within about 30 centimetres of where they should be, which is more than good enough.

The app-download barrier is real, though. Melbourne Airport says about 15% of international passengers have the app installed, which is decent for an airport app but means 85% of travellers don’t have access. They’re reportedly exploring a WebAR alternative for the wayfinding feature specifically, which would dramatically increase usage.

One nice touch: the system flags walking times to your gate and warns you if you’re at risk of missing boarding. It knows how far you are, estimates your walking speed, and factors in security queue wait times (sourced from the airport’s queue monitoring system). That’s genuinely useful information that traditional signage can’t provide.

Westfield Chatswood, Sydney

This is the retail deployment, and it’s the weakest of the three.

Westfield’s AR wayfinding works via WebAR and covers the main shopping centre. Scan, point your phone, follow the arrows to whatever store you’re looking for. Simple enough in theory.

In practice, the multi-level glass-and-steel architecture of a modern shopping centre is brutally challenging for AR tracking. Reflective surfaces confuse the visual positioning. Large open atriums mean the system sometimes can’t determine which level you’re on. And the constant movement of other shoppers creates visual noise that degrades tracking stability.

I tested it finding three stores. One journey worked perfectly. One lost tracking twice and required re-scanning. One gave me directions to the correct level but then guided me past the store entrance—I had to backtrack 20 metres.

The contrast with the hospital and airport deployments is stark. Those environments have relatively controlled conditions: consistent lighting, distinctive architecture, fewer reflective surfaces. A shopping centre is an AR tracking nightmare.

Common Themes

Across all three sites, some patterns emerged.

Bluetooth beacon infrastructure is essential. Visual positioning alone isn’t reliable enough for environments where tracking can be lost. The beacons provide a fallback positioning system that keeps the experience working even when the camera struggles.

Phone battery impact is noticeable. Running AR navigation for 10-15 minutes consumed about 8-10% battery on my test phone (iPhone 15 Pro). For a hospital visit or airport transit, that’s fine. For extended shopping, it might make people think twice.

Accessibility needs more attention. None of the three deployments had strong provisions for users with visual impairments or mobility limitations. AR wayfinding could potentially integrate with audio guidance and wheelchair-accessible routing, but none of these implementations do that yet.

Is AR Wayfinding Ready?

For controlled environments with genuine wayfinding challenges—hospitals, airports, convention centres, universities—yes, it’s ready. Not perfect, but measurably better than signage alone, and the WebAR approach removes enough friction to achieve decent adoption.

For retail, the technology needs another generation or two. The tracking challenges in reflective, open-plan commercial environments are significant, and the value proposition is thinner—most people can find their way around a shopping centre with existing signage.

The most promising direction is integration with other services. An airport app that combines wayfinding with flight updates, queue times, and lounge access is more compelling than navigation alone. A hospital system that integrates with appointment scheduling and wait time estimates adds value beyond just showing you where to walk.

AR indoor navigation isn’t magic. It’s a useful tool in environments where getting lost has real consequences—missing a flight, being late for a medical appointment, wandering confused through a hospital in an already stressful moment. Those are the deployments worth watching.