Listening to a monotonous guide describing a painting or telling the story of a monument has become hugely boring for many tourists, especially for the youngest ones. That is to say they are way less attracted by this. Based on this observation, and to suit their visitors’ new habits, museums from all around the world upgrade their cultural approach for 10 years now. How? By using the digital and its abundant possibilities!

Customized tours thanks to the interactive plan in digital museums

The first opportunity offered to museums and tourist sites is to offer smartphone/tablet apps, downloadable from their website or from terminals at their entrance. At SmartApps, this costs less than €2000.

Today’s unmissable app is the interactive plan. It allows visitors to locate the works they want to see and therefore create their customized route, depending on how much time they have. The visitors can download or print it. Some apps also allow people to reach a lot of contents to enrich their tour — documentation, photos, archives, interviews, articles, anecdotes… the visitor chooses depending on his mood.

More interaction with the works… to the intelligent dialog

Thanks to the digital, it is now possible to put intelligent plates beside works that catch the visitors’ attention and offer extra information (video or audio) on their smartphone or tablet. It is referred to commentated works.

Digital museums also deal with artificial intelligence, particularly with IBM Watson’s technology that enables to go even further. It allows people to ask questions to the work and to converse with it. This technology is already used in Sao Paulo’s Art Gallery.

More fascinating works with augmented reality

The digital also enables to overlay 3D or 2D virtual contents and the perception of reality — the work you watch — through a screen or specific glasses, provided by the digital museums. Those that have enough budget already took the step, such as the Musée d’Orsay with Courbet’s “Atelier du peintre”. This technic enables to add virtual works to make relevant comparisons between works. Moreover, it allows visitors to travel through time to follow some monuments’ construction.

A new type of guided tours

Some digital museums with a big budget can afford the services of a cobot — or collaborative robot. At the Louvre-Lens, the latter is called Uby, and the one tested at the French Army Museum, Azkar. They are interactive, kindly and multilingual — they seem not to offer more than a human does. However, the experience show that visitors tend to ask more questions to a cobot than to a human. Their other advantage is that they are connected, which allows the museums to remotely organize tours for schools or persons with reduced mobility.

An opportunity to be seized to attract new and former customers

Nowadays, whether you are a museum/tourist site director or a tour operator, offering at least an app to visitors to give them a rich experience has become unmissable. Why? To attract the 18-30 years olds — who are digital lovers — but also to renew the former visitors’ appeal with fun and cultural novelties. You must know that Sao Paulo’s Art Gallery got 40% additional entrances thanks to IBM Watson, something to dream about!

You can also promote your museum thanks to onboard digital advertising to reach a captive audience ready to visit your museum!