A city of history, culture and little known treasures, welcome to Berlin. To add one more reason why you should plan a walking tour here if you are, why not go all out by making it interactive? In this article, I want to make sure you will learn how to captivate your audience, and make your Berlin walking tours memorable.
- Audio Guides to engage your senses
Audio guides are a great way to fully immerse in the stories and sounds of Berlin, and they’re great with groups, too. Audio guides allow you to have a supplementary historical context, ambient background music, even personal anecdotes from locals to rely on besides your words. With their multiple perspectives, audio guides add richness to the experience and pose an opportunity for visitors to feel an emotional tie to the places being explored.
When creating an audio guide, make sure to:
Finally, we have script our narration in a conversational and engaging tone.
Add some interesting anecdotes, and some facts that aren’t so widely known.
Put up clear instructions and directions for travel
Find background music that fits the tour’s mood
Write your narration in a conversational, informal way
Rich with interesting anecdotes and asides, come down heavy on lesser known facts
Make navigation clear and gave cues.
In addition to this, you can select background music compatible with the tour’s atmosphere.
- Add Augmented Reality (AR) Experiences
Using Augmented Reality, the present layer blends with the history. This makes things more real for tourists so they can visualize what historical sites used to look like in their heyday and may see significant events through virtual reconstructions.
Consider integrating AR experiences into your walking tour in the following ways:
Historical Photo Overlays
AR technology will showcase old photographs of key landmarks and overlay them on the current view. It offers a brilliant before and after to give people a sense of how Berlin has developed into what it is today.
Virtual Guides
Add additional stories and information in the form of virtual guides that appear on a user’s smartphone screen at specific points of interest. This interactive element makes the users interact with their environment and stimulates their curiosity.
- Scavenger Hunts can Gamify Your Tour
Organise a scavenger hunt element to your walking tours. Solutions to interactive challenges and puzzles will help hold participants entertained throughout the journey. Not only will they be able to learn a little about Berlin’s history and culture, but they’ll have fun doing it.
To create a successful scavenger hunt, keep these tips in mind:
Create fascinating clues that get your people moving from one place to another
Use games and puzzles that you interact within the environment.
Offer small rewards or incentives for finishing each challenge
Provide hints/help for those who could be struggling.
Creating interesting clues that will lead them to different places.
Playing games and puzzles with interaction with the environment
Rewards or incentives for completing each challenge
Provide hints or help for those who may not do well
- More often than not, we try to encourage social sharing and user generated content.
People love to share their experiences on social media nowadays. Promote tour participants to make memories and capture those moments to share with the world. Use a hashtag, like #BerlinWalkingTours to encourage them to use that hashtag so that they can connect with others who have the same interests.
In addition, you can create interactive activities that involve users’ generated content. For instance, if you ask people to take photos at various locations or to share historical anecdotes of their own. In addition to enhancing the tour, this also gathers multiple voices and stories together.
- Take Advantage of QR Codes for More Information
The great thing about QR codes is that it’s an easy, linear method for giving supplementary information to your tour participants. Place QR codes in the site at major locations and can give access to video, articles and other multimedia about the videos historical, cultural of the site or about the architecture of the site.
Be sure to label your QR codes clearly, and they should be readily scannable. Include, if possible, a brief description next to each code telling your participants approximately what they are in for when they scan.
Conclusion
To transform your Berlin walking tours into immersive and interactive experience, use technology, gamification, social sharing. You will create lasting impressions (recollections) and distribute your memories if you engage the presenters’ senses and encourage their active involvement. Certainly, go ahead and try these ideas, have some creative fun, come up with unforgettable experience that are Berlin’s wonders.
