Case Studies
Regent Seven Seas Cruise®:
“How App Technology Enhances Shore Excursions and Provides a Safer Experience for Cruise Passengers.”
The Covid-19 health crisis has dramatically accelerated the trend toward technologies that enable contactless interaction. But hygiene is not the only driver of this trend. The replacement of third-party devices with people’s own smartphones eliminates storage, cleaning, and maintenance costs, as well as any wait times that exist when collecting and dispensing conventional radio receivers. Furthermore, such new technologies contribute to environmental sustainability.
The shift is already happening as more and more cruise companies are switching from traditional tour guide systems to a smartphone-based technology.
Scenic Luxury Cruises:
“How an innovative technology for livestream shore excursions is helping to resume Scenic operations more aligned with COVID-19 hygiene concerns.”
The German and Swiss companies that make up the Guiding-Group have suppliedScenic since 2011. This ongoing collaboration has produced several generations oftailor-made guide devices over the years.
Since 2019, customers of Scenic River Cruises are benefiting from an advanced and safe tour guide technology based on passengers’ own smartphones.
Smart Streaming Solutions, founded in 2019 under the Guiding-Group umbrella, tookon the task of developing a unique smartphone-based tour guide system that wouldbe the last piece in the puzzle.
Venice Tours:
“Venice Tours digitalising their whole tour excursions experience in collaboration with Guiding Group.”
Venice Tours and Guiding Group have been partnering for several years to develop the best technologies for guided tour excursions. Today’s travellers are becoming more tech savvy and more and more tourists rely primarily on their phones for all aspects of travel. Venice Tours, as the innovative leader amongst tour operators, saw the need to get rid of traditional whisper systems and let their customers use their own smartphones instead. Moreover, they wanted to reuse their multilingual pre-recorded content during group tours in addition to the self-guided tours.
Challenges
They started rethinking the technology around their excursions a few years ago.
As they welcome thousands of tourists of different nationalities every week, they considered how to create the best experiences for everyone while being more cost effective.
The traditional way of guiding had to be adjusted as technology evolved in this field. The first challenge was to change the mentality of customers and make each customer’s phone a comprehensive travel companion: a device for guided and self-guided tours.
They also faced the question of how to change the way they could serve multilingual groups by reusing the content they had pre- recorded.