Experience of creating immersive audio excursions on smart platform Qwixi

Abstract

The article discusses the practical mechanisms for creating modern audio-tour products. The methodology of creating audio- tour is largely identical to the methodology for developing a classical excursion but includes a number of distinctive features. Among them are many technical aspects due to the specifics of the platform ad special requirements for the design of the tour route. The developer needs to consider an audio guidance system for moving along the route and ensure that the listener perceives the excursion without the physical presence of the guide. Each audio-tour should be followed by a control text, a route map, a technological map, passports of the main sites, as well as additional illustrative objects that can be loaded to individual points of the route as so-called “portfolio of guide". The article also provides a methodology for determining the target audience of consumers of an audio-tour. The article presents the experience of developing two immersive audio-tours on the Qwixi-Tour platform by RGUTIS students: “Hexagonal Moscow: In the footsteps of Masons through the Times” and “Once Upon a Time Sergiev Posad ...”. The experience gained empirically and the methodology for developing audio- tours confirms the unlimited possibilities of modern audio-tour platforms for enthusiastic professional guide. The article provides the examples of calculating the economic cost of developing and selling an audio-tours, indicating the possibility for any guide to create a marketable and profitable product on the Qwixi smart platform. The developed audio-tours contain such elements as entertainment, training, aesthetics, escape from reality, together making up the concept of “experience economy,” the growing phenomenon of the services market.