Unlocking Immersive Experiences with Augmented Reality

In episode 4 of our "Tour Tech: Your 5 Weekly Takeaways to Tourism Success" podcast series, part of the EU-funded Tourbit project , we learn about how Augmented Reality (AR) and other digital tools can help create unique experiences that seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds. This article explores how eXplorins and Pelai Centre i Rodalies have worked together to create phygital experiences, a concept that merges the physical and digital worlds to create unique and engaging experiences, transforming the visitor experience in Barcelona.

Building a Street of the Future through Phygital Experiences

Javier López García, Manager of Pelai Centre i Rodalies, talks about Pelai Street, a central street in Barcelona with a lot of internationally recognised brands, and the desire to make it a "street of the future" through a long-term ambition to rethink the city model. This requires close cooperation with the city council as part of Pelai Street's urban planning transition. As a dynamic location with a varied mix of students, visitors and locals, Pelai Centre i Rodalies is implementing innovative projects to revitalise the street and help to establish a new identity as a modern and trendy district.

eXplorins develops and creates digital products for the B2B market, using Web 3.0 technologies such as AR, blockchain and geolocation to achieve this goal, while always prioritising sustainability. Angela Bustillos, Co-founder & CMO of eXplorins, describes the company's mission as connecting technology with the physical world to create human-centred experiences for cultural projects, urban development and experiential marketing, using creative approaches to build visitor engagement. Through this strategy, eXplorins supports brands to maximise their visibility and simultaneously boost visitor experiences.

Angela highlights how technology can be an important tool to connect people and develop a positive impact, with technology being a channel that connects visitors to more engaging and immersive physical experiences which enable culture and tradition to remain the main focus. She explains the significance of investing in revitalising urban spaces by turning them into interactive art galleries and adding digital layers, with AR glasses like the Apple VisionPro likely to disrupt current approaches to tourism. Most importantly, the democratisation and accessibility of experiences inspire communities and help to reimagine urban landscapes and the future of cities, where residents contribute to destination storytelling alongside brands through shared governance.

Pelai Virtual Gallery: Europe's First AR Gallery

One of the two projects launched by eXplorins to support the mission of Pelai Centre i Rodalies is the Pelai Virtual Gallery, Europe's first AR gallery, which can be accessed through a link on social media. This phygital experience allows visitors to use the eXplorins app to view 3D artworks by 15 local artists placed throughout the street, with the locations visible on the map. After starting the 'game', visitors can walk along Pelai Street and view the localised AR artworks.  

Adding to the experience, the artwork can be interacted with and even purchased as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using blockchain, becoming a digital souvenir of the city. Importantly, using this technology to facilitate transactions enables the artists and a local charity to receive royalties every time their artwork is resold. Meanwhile, the blockchain used by eXplorins has been certified as carbon neutral. Consequently, Pelai Virtual Gallery is an iconic project where sustainability is connected with cultural experiences that are creative, diverse and democratised to generate positive social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts for Barcelona.

Omnichannel Experiences: Pelai Virtual Christmas

While Pelai Virtual Gallery was a flagship initiative, Pelai Virtual Christmas acted as a seasonal initiative during winter when Christmas lights are an integral part of city aesthetics and the holiday shopping experience. Javier mentions that Christmas lights are traditional and haven't seen much innovation in recent years. He was inspired by a story from the USA in which a large QR code was created in the sky using drones and received a lot of scans in a short timeframe.

For Pelai Virtual Christmas, large QR codes were placed in the middle of the street next to the Christmas lights, capturing the attention of people walking down the street. By scanning the QR codes with their phones, visitors can access and watch 3D Christmas models and animations on their phones, taking pictures as they walk. This innovative approach has garnered significant media coverage and positive feedback, with 16,900 people scanning the QR codes in 28 days, spending around two minutes viewing the content.

The reach of the campaign was further augmented by the AR models being connected to Snapchat, popular among American visitors, with viewers playing the game for between three and three and a half minutes. Each of the three pieces of artwork has between 70,000 and 100,000 views on Snapchat; the majority of which were in the first week of the campaign given the fast-moving nature of content trends on the platform.

These figures demonstrate the importance of having an omnichannel approach for experiential marketing activities. Javier also highlights that 50,000 postcards with the campaign artwork and QR codes were distributed physically in Pelai Street's hotels, further promoting the Pelai Street brand as visitors send them to their families and friends.

Choosing Appropriate User Interfaces

Angela highlights the importance of selecting the right user interface for each phygital experience. She explains how eXplorins can integrate the experience within their app, providing free experiences for visitors. eXplorins can also integrate their technology into their clients' apps, which she notes is a common approach.  

Considerations such as the creation of loyalty programmes necessitate using an app because of the need to develop a cable layer. eXplorins is currently in the process of building a loyalty programme system that connects accommodations, stakeholders and users in order to use blockchain technology as the way to collect and receive points, ensuring transparency and enabling communities to be built in the tourism sector to foster sustainability and create long-term relationships between visitors and residents.

However, Angela also emphasises that web AR integrations and internet browsers can make it easier for visitors to watch and live the experience, as shown by Pelai Virtual Christmas. Nevertheless, for some 3D models an app is needed to view the native content. This is not the case for the AR visualisations in Pelai Street, while Pelai Virtual Gallery's NFTs do require an app connection.

Key Takeaways for SMEs

Digital tools can be utilised creatively, helping the tourism sector to reinvent visitor experiences. By blending the digital and physical environments, engaging and interactive experiences can showcase the vibrancy of a destination, bringing the wow factor that immerses visitors in the full experience, where uniqueness is central to achieving maximum enjoyment. Crucially, technology is only a supporting factor, with the focus of experiences remaining on culture. In this light, great care needs to be placed on identifying the right user interface for the final output of different projects, whether that be through an app, in the case of Pelai Virtual Gallery, or social media channels, such as for Pelai Virtual Christmas.

Through unique and innovative phygital experiences, the opportunities for viral marketing are immense, with cool concepts going viral on social media, raising awareness of destinations and encouraging people to experience something different. Importantly, the actual phygital experiences can be measured against a range of KPIs to determine the success of these innovative immersive experiences, with metrics such as visitor engagement being a key determinant to understanding visitor satisfaction.

Beyond the immediate visitor experiences, technologies such as NFTs and blockchain have great potential for maximising transparency and creating shared loyalty programmes among stakeholders within the destination, where open governance and accessibility are key pillars of this new approach. Complementing physical souvenirs, these technologies also present opportunities for selling digital souvenirs, where visitors purchase a unique memento that reminds them of their great experience, while also bringing social impact by enabling artists to receive royalties from their artwork being resold, alongside donations to local projects.

With sustainability considerations at the core of project planning, immersive experiences benefit locals through community building, while a clear goal of bringing visibility for local artists multiplies the cultural impact. Similarly, environmental emissions are taken into consideration through the use of carbon neutral certified digital tools.

Here are the five key takeaways:

1. Technology can enhance cultural engagement if we use it appropriately. For example, AR and blockchain have shown their potential to transform traditional cultural experiences and make them more interactive and memorable.
2. Sustainability and innovation go hand in hand. Phygital initiatives also promote a different way of engaging and interacting with the environment around us, which helps us to bring positive contributions to local communities.
3. Accessibility and democratisation are complementary, with collaboration helping businesses to leverage digital technologies and reach a wider audience.
4. Digital tokens bring an entirely new way of thinking about local spend, with virtual experiences offering innovative ways for visitors to take home memories.
5. Technology enables us to build communities. Having the right underlying technology is key to fostering an environment of collaboration, where developments and initiatives are completely redefined from a grassroots approach.

The podcast is part of the Tourbit project, co-funded by the EU's COSME programme, with the support of the Agència Catalana de Turisme / Catalan Tourist Board , CCBLB - Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in Barcelona , Paris&Co , Arctur , hub.brussels , Iceland Tourism Cluster , Lapland University of Applied Sciences and NEST Centro de Inovação do Turismo .