Last year Radio Guide Company won the tender “On the creation of digital excursion audio content and its subsequent recording on the specialized devices – Audio-guide”, conducted by the Federal Agency for Tourism.
Purpose of work – formation of a positive image of Russia as a country favorable for tourism and recreation, creation of conditions to increase the attendance of tourist facilities of the Russian Federation, development of domestic tourism, improvement of the individual tourist service quality by promoting Audio-guide digital electronic excursion devices.
To fulfill the state order, the company hired the best tour guides, employees of local history museums - historians, art experts from Saint Petersburg, the Crimean Federal District and the Krasnodar Krai, who managed to prepare unique excursion materials. A total of 6 excursion programs are recorded on 300 devices for the three destinations.
For example, the audio material of the sightseeing tour about Saint Petersburg was 4 hours 25 minutes of continuous playing, audio material about Peterhof - 1 hour 45 minutes. The audio-guide route for the Crimea includes Kerch (3 h 30 min), Yalta (4 h 25 min) and Sevastopol (3 h 5 min).
When creating audio tours about Sochi (4 hours 2 min), priority was given to the Olympic theme, which was reflected not only in the text, but also in the design of tourist maps, made in the sports style.
When preparing the materials the principle of independence of each excursion object and its diversified presentation. The greatest attention in the texts is paid to historical events, which had a key influence on the development of a given region and defined its cultural identity.
Translation of all the excursion materials into English, their adaptation for a foreign listener was carried out by an experienced translator - a native speaker, which ensured a high quality and interest of the translated content.
Recording of the prepared materials in two languages was carried out at the audio studio of Radio Guide by involving professional speakers.
As for the Audio-guide devices, the experts of the engineering department of the company prepared several hundred stylish and reliable devices specifically for this project, which would delight the future users by their design and functionality.
As envisioned by the developers and according to the technical requirements, each Audio-guide should include a map with a recommended tourist route and ordinal numbering of objects for easy play of the excursion tracks. These maps were developed by the company designers, taking into account the recommendations of guides and local historians, where some tourism clusters were enlarged and separated. According to market experts, it is a good and functional product that will undoubtedly enrich the range of tourism products of these regions.
It was proved by approbation of AG-11 audio-guides with the prepared audio content in mixed focus groups of Russian and foreign tourists. In this study, 90% of respondents give a clear favorable praise of the new product (10% - could not answer), while 70% of the respondents confidently noted that they were ready to recommend their friends and family to use the audio-guides.
According to the interviewed tourists the main advantages of audio-guides include: freedom of movement, independence, lack of crowding, ability to personally manage their time, if necessary - to hear the material again.
“We consider our work on the implementation of the state order for creating a series of unique audio-guides for the most important destinations of the Russian Federation as a contribution to the development of international individual tourism, improvement of the service quality of Russian hosting enterprises. Our responsible approach to this project results from understanding that our product will be used by thousands of people for several years, and they will estimate the level of Russian technologies and tourism industry of our country according to its characteristics” , - commented the General Director of Radio Guide LLC Sergey Davletshin.