Amira van Weegen
Marketing Manager
April 20, 2026
Smart City Neckargemünd: From Pilot Project to Digital Administration – with anny
4 min
Introduction
Vacancy, paper chaos, and a caretaker who has to unlock every room access in person. That’s what municipal space management looked like in Neckargemünd—and it still looks that way in many German cities today. With the federal funding initiative "Model Projects Smart Cities" from the BMWSB and KfW, and anny as its digital backbone, the small town in the Rhein-Neckar district transformed an abandoned property - Villa Menzer - into a vibrant community hub and, in the process, kicked off the digital transformation of the entire city administration.
Project Snapshot: An Overview at a Glance
Neckargemünd is not a large city, and that is exactly what makes this case so interesting.
Municipality: Town of Neckargemünd, Rhein-Neckar District, Baden-Württemberg
Funding program: Smart Cities model project by the BMWSB and KfW
Partners: Rhein-Neckar District, Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region, City of Heidelberg
Project location: Villa Menzer
Contact person: Lena Hinz, Community Manager of the FREIRÄUME project
Use cases with anny: Co-working, multi-use spaces, sports hall rentals in addition to Villa Menzer, online payments
Smart City is not sci-fi — it’s a legal requirement
Flying cars, giant server farms, sensors on every corner. When people think of smart cities, they probably think of distant future scenarios. The federal government defines it in a slightly less futuristic, but much more realistic way:
Community-oriented: Technology must serve people, not the other way around
Holistic: An integrated approach that connects administration, people, space, and resources
Participation: No one should be left behind
What many municipalities still haven't on their radar: The OZG (Online Access Act) makes this mandatory. Municipalities are required to offer services such as booking sports facilities or rooms digitally, accessibly, and with low barriers.
For Neckargemünd, Smart City means three concrete things in everyday life:
Mindset before technology: It's not about buzzwords, but about the willingness to break up rigid processes and rethink them. Software can be installed quickly, but poor processes don't get better through digitalization.
Connected instead of isolated: Smart City needs connected thinking rather than digital island solutions. Individual tools don't go far if they don't work together.
Rethink instead of just digitizing: The goal is to relieve the administration and enable digital participation for everyone – with FREIRÄUME as a social and digital anchor point in the city.
Three pillars, one goal: the FREIRÄUME funding project in Neckargemünd
The heart of the project is Villa Menzer, a municipal building that stood empty for a long time and now addresses three core community challenges at the same time.
Pillar 1: Co-working in rural areas
Creating modern "New Work" offerings for people who would otherwise commute daily to Heidelberg or Mannheim. A clear message: "We may be smaller than the major cities, but we can do this too." If they wish, users can even register a business address at Villa Menzer. And: the initial driver for the entire digital booking system emerged right here in the co-working area. The search for a flexible, hourly online booking solution was the starting point for everything that followed.
Pillar 2: Flexible spaces for clubs and citizens
Multifunctional spaces for civil society, clubs, weddings, and exhibitions with a clear focus on social participation. Clubs and volunteers often struggle to find suitable rooms at all. At Villa Menzer, they book the very same rooms that are used for seminars in the morning - by the hour, with no hassle, digitally. The ceremonial room can even be booked for civil registry weddings. Flexible use as a design principle.
Pillar 3: Smart Tourism
Experience history through augmented reality, monitor tree irrigation in Menzer Park via sensors, take a digital city tour, or use the digital borrowing locker in the park. In addition, there are events for businesses centered on smart city and digitalization. The third pillar shows that smart city goes far beyond administrative processes and includes the entire urban community.
Before anny: Excel and Phone Tag
The situation in Neckargemünd was one many municipalities will recognize. Lena’s summary: lots and lots of spreadsheets and a lot of phone calls. A look at the status quo:
Gym bookings: By phone only. An association calls, wants a slot—it’s already booked. So the calls continue, the coordination continues. Constantly.
Civil wedding ceremonies: For every individual booking—sometimes just one hour—contracts were printed in triplicate, signed by the bride and groom, sent back to the office, and forwarded all the way to the mayor.
Key management: No access without the caretaker. With growing demand for rooms, it simply no longer scaled.
Access codes: Sent manually one by one. Mistakes happened. People stood in front of locked doors on weekends, and Lena got called.
“That was simply solved by the system,” Lena says in retrospect. “It basically doesn’t exist anymore now, that problem.”
The Path to the Right Booking Software for Municipalities
The path to anny was anything but straight, and that is exactly why it offers valuable lessons for other municipalities.
Phase 1 – Open-Source Tool: As a funded project, using an open-source system was a requirement of the funding body. A suitable tool was tested and helped bridge the initial setup. The limitation became apparent quickly: only full days could be booked, not hourly slots. That was not sustainable for the long-term operation of Villa Menzer. However, the test clarified the actual requirements – and marked the starting signal for the search for private providers, knowing that those costs would no longer be eligible for funding.
Phase 2 – Public Tender: As a municipality, Neckargemünd is bound by legal procurement requirements – above certain contract values, public procurement law requires a public tender. A lengthy, resource-intensive process. However, the selected system did not deliver the promised integration with the digital door system. More months of waiting followed. Lena continued to send manual codes.
Phase 3 – anny: anny had also applied for the tender and was able to deliver all the required features, including the crucial interface to the door system. The decision was clear.
What anny specifically delivers at Villa Menzer
The Villa Menzer booking page is now the digital hub of the entire operation. What anny handles day to day:
For bookers – citizens, clubs, businesses:
Booking Flex Desks for day-by-day co-working
Reservation of seminar room, event room, foyer, and workshop room
Rental of a business address at Villa Menzer
Signing up for monthly subscriptions for regular users
Online payment directly in the booking flow via PayPal or credit card
For administration – Lena and her team:
Automatic invoice delivery after every booking
Seamless integration with the digital door system – access is unlocked automatically upon booking confirmation
Monthly data export for municipal accounting
Central management of all resources in a single interface instead of scattered Excel spreadsheets
The decisive difference: The door-system integration. Anyone who books gets access. Automatically. No caretaker. No manual codes. No weekend call.
From an Empty House to a Thriving Community: The Results
What has the project actually achieved? The effects are visible on two levels.
External – the community is growing:
A vacant property has been transformed into a vibrant, lively venue
User demand is so strong that they want Villa Menzer to continue even after funding ends in August 2027
Villa Menzer is known beyond Neckargemünd as an example of successful municipal digitalization
Internal – the administration is thinking differently:
The mindset within the city administration has shifted: there is growing openness to digital processes
The lessons learned from Villa Menzer are being actively transferred to other municipal buildings
Spillover effect: The positive experiences from Villa Menzer are radiating across the entire city. Citizens can now also pay by PayPal at the municipal swimming pool, and gyms and sports fields are booked via anny – all developments that were never part of the original project, but were triggered by its success.
Lena’s Top Tips: How Other Municipalities Can Get Started Successfully
From two years of project experience, Lena Hinz has clear recommendations for municipalities looking to follow a similar path.
Before you start – clarify the basics:
Realistically assess demand: What do you want to make bookable? For whom? From when does the setup effort pay off – a storage room doesn't justify it, but five to six actively used rooms certainly do.
Define responsibilities: Who manages the system? Who answers questions? Who takes over if that one person is on vacation?
Train at least two people. Really. No project should depend on a single person.
During implementation – bring people along:
Involve all stakeholders early, even if it slows down preparation. Anyone who was allowed to help shape the process design later becomes an advocate, not a blocker.
Stay persistent and actively communicate the benefits. Changed processes meet resistance. That's normal. Anyone who can explain the benefits well will win over colleagues.
Don't wait for perfection. Start, adapt, keep going. A half-finished building that goes into operation delivers more than a perfect concept that is never realized.
For the long haul – networking as a strategy:
Look at best practices from other municipalities. Visit projects that interest you.
Build connections with contacts you can call when you get stuck.
Finding allies is more important than budgets; without people who are truly excited about the topic, no project gets off the ground.
Want to find out whether anny is the right fit for your municipality?
Whether room booking, co-working spaces, citizen service offices, or sports facility management, anny maps municipal requirements in a central solution. In a non-binding introductory call, we'll show you how your municipalities can also use anny.
Book a demo with the anny team now to learn more: Schedule a demo.
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