Place

Here’s a question: if the main purpose of advertising is to inform people about a product and convince them to buy from a particular brand, is there any point to an advert if the end user can’t remember the name of the brand? It’s a perennial struggle for advertisers; how do you make your content interesting, fun and engaging but also effective?

A slightly different challenge is apparent when trying to help guide people around a place using digital tools. While people know the brand (where they are), the crucial question then becomes: how can you elevate the level of endearment for that place?

There is, however, a fundamental link between advertising and digital placemaking: this is the need to know your purpose (why?), audience (who?) and medium (how?).

Drawing on Calvium’s experience of developing digital placemaking solutions, this article will explore how to build meaningful connections with places in a way that doesn’t disrupt the overall experience and enjoyment of a place.

Building connections through storytelling

At times the digital landscape associated with Place seems dominated by the likes of Google, Tripadvisor and Airbnb.

We see many digital experiences attempting to ape what these big digital players already do very well, which is catalogue information about a place in an incredibly effective yet ultimately transactional manner.

While a “directory” approach to information is necessary and serves an important purpose, it is impossible to compete with these digital giants. Surely, then, the time and effort that goes into this mimicry would be much better spent focusing on building and fostering those all-important deeper relationships between people and place?

A place has history, context and is shaped by its people. There are stories to be told of ancient civilisations, historic buildings, closed down factories and new emerging industries. Speak to locals, dig out old photos and video footage from the archives. Create trails for different audiences – scavenger hunts for children, tours of incredible architecture, walks through the sites of gory crimes through the centuries…

Digital placemaking has the ability to bring places to life in the same way that a good book stimulates our imagination. Focus on the narrative and people will want to read your book over and over again.

There is another important synergy to note between the effectiveness of digital placemaking and advertising. In the same way that good brand-building can help an advertiser to boost sales, good place-based storytelling that elevates the level of endearment for a place can help to boost the local economy too.

For example, let’s imagine a digital placemaking experience is taking somebody on a journey through Georgian architecture and they pass a guitar shop. It just so happens this person is in the market for a new guitar and makes a mental note to pop in the shop when they are back in town next week. Ostensibly they are on an Architecture trail but it doesn’t mean they cannot still support the visitor economy.

Guiding people through spaces with digital placemaking

Storytelling sits at the heart of Calvium’s Place Experience Platform (PEP) and we were thrilled to be selected as part of the CreaTech Ones to Watch in September 2021 on the back of its development.

Our PEP incorporates a number of basic features that have been designed to bring to life the rich and diverse stories of places in an easy and flexible way:

• It gives local placemaking experts the chance to write and update the stories of their area (editorial control of the content through a simple-to-use Content Management System).
• It allows the option to explore ad hoc or through themed trails.
• It allows people to enjoy the experience just as comfortably back at home on the sofa.
• It accepts that different people prefer to digest information in different ways and so uses a combination of images, text, audio and video.
• It works when there is no connectivity, which is still an issue in many urban centres and certainly in the countryside.
• It recognises that not everyone finds it easy to consume data on a phone…accessibility must always be at the heart of good mobile design and we took great care to look at font type, colour contrast and layout.

When done thoughtfully, digital placemaking has a powerful role to play in supporting the visitor economy. Here are some of our key considerations when thinking about storytelling through digital placemaking:

Fresh is best

Places are always changing, evolving and redeveloping – this means engagement with the community can be too. There are always new angles to the same place, which was why Calvium made it easy for non-technical contributors to add new content to the PEP and update place experiences instantly.

Be imaginative

A place has many stories to tell; you just need to be prepared to come at them from a different angle. This can be readily achieved through the PEP, like with Carnaby Echoes – a wonderful example of how the story of a place (Carnaby Street) was told through music and the people that lived and worked there.

iDetroit, meanwhile – which wasn’t built on the PEP – highlights another effective way to “map” a city through the story of its citizens. In this instance, through the clever use of machine learning, photography and immersive sound.

Be immersive without being disruptive

People can get carried away with wanting to use all the latest technology but tech should never be the destination of a digital placemaking project.

Ask what will best achieve the scope of your project, not detract from it – for example, an AR-based experience can be incredibly immersive and innovative but we shouldn’t be requiring people to look at their phones all the time if it swamps the enjoyment of a place.

We are big fans of audio here at Calvium. It is one of the most immersive experiences you can have and a key feature of the PEP for this reason.

In summary

Harking back to those shared principles we touched on at the start:

Know your purpose. Using a digital tool to help guide people around a place can sometimes be about engagement, not simply a directory for transactions. If you have notched up the level of love for a place then you have increased the likelihood that people will want to spend more time in it.

Know your audience. If people have accessed your app or website then they probably want to be entertained as well as informed. Remember, different people will want different ways of digesting information so give them options. Whatever you do and however you choose to do it, storytelling should always be the aim.

Know your medium. Phones are great – they have made possible what was impossible not even that long ago – but they should never get in the way of the experience. The information should be accessible to all and the emphasis should be on the people enjoying the place – not the tech.

You can be immersive without being distracting and that is an important thing to remember when undertaking any digital placemaking project.

Digital technologies play key roles in the ways that most people in the UK connect to the world around them, whether planning a holiday, travelling to the high street or resting in a park.

For placemakers and place marketing professionals, whose job it is to develop marketing strategies for, and attract visitors (and investors) to a particular location, digital tech has become an increasingly important part of their marketing toolkit.

Place professionals are passionate about fostering vibrant destinations and welcoming public spaces, and digital technologies are supporting them to do this in a variety of new and innovative ways.

Wanting to support and empower professionals in this space, to increase engagement with their locations and boost local economies, last year we launched a unique digital placemaking platform to put the power of digital placemaking directly into the hands of place marketers.

The Place Experience Platform (PEP) is already being used in 10 cities across Europe and recently saw Calvium become a finalist for ‘Innovation’ in the 2022 UK Digital Growth Awards, as well as be recognised as one of CreaTech Ones to Watch 2021.

With PEP gearing up to launch in five new locations, we wanted to give some insight into how PEP is helping to create distinct and memorable identities for destinations, deepen the connections between visitors and places, and foster ground-breaking changes in public spaces.

Features and functionality

On a top level, PEP combines the ability to create, deliver, update and analyse bespoke digital visitor experiences. Its USP is that it is an integrated system that gives clients the power of three digital place marketing and experience tools in one: an app for the public, content management system for place marketers, and an analytics dashboard to measure impact.

In order to ensure it would be easy to use for both place marketers in charge of the experiences and for the visitors, user-centred design informed all stages of the design and development of the platform.

Visitor App

The app attracts people to a destination, provides a unique experience when there and encourages repeat visits by:

• Providing unique geolocated content about a destination, combining wayfinding, storytelling and up-to-date information.
• Offering a responsive and personalised visitor experience, 24/7.
• Acting as a place assurance companion.

Content Management System

The CMS is an easy-to-use, flexible and scalable tool that gives place marketers complete control of all the content seen in the visitor app. This is achieved by:

• Enabling visitor experiences to be changed easily and quickly.
• Allowing the co-creation of stories with communities or by professional practitioners.
• Providing the ability to design and map place trails, which can help to draw visitors away from busy thoroughfares and bottlenecks that cause poor experiences.
• Supporting the economies of less visited areas by encouraging visitors to move around the location in a guided way.
• Allowing for real-time responsiveness.

Dashboard

The analytics dashboard provides clear data visualisations of use by:

• Tracking usage of key features to reveal visitor preferences.
• Enhancing data-driven decision making.

How the Place Experience Platform solves key challenges

Today’s place marketers and placemaking specialists face a number of significant challenges around time, cost and resource, which PEP’s robust and flexible technology seeks to address.

Challenge: Town and city high streets have declining footfall and spend.

• PEP benefit: Place marketers are tasked with supporting the local economy. PEP enables them to create visitor experiences that distribute footfall around a location – increasing dwell time and spend.

Challenge: Traditional marketing resources are static; including printed guidebooks, maps and posters.

• PEP benefit: PEP enables marketers to easily change content, such as access routes in line with road closures, pop-up activities and stories. It delivers multiple types of geolocated content direct to users’ smartphones through a destination’s branded app.

Challenge: Traditional marketing materials are not customisable for individual preferences.

• PEP benefit: The accessible app has personalisation at its heart, including language selection and customisable assets. It is also compliant with the most up-to-date Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Challenge: To create and update geolocated apps, the cost and time needed to commission third-party developers is significant.

• PEP benefit: PEP empowers clients to create and publish their own app content, therefore streamlining workflow and saving budget.

Challenge: Local creative input fails to be sourced and applied to place marketing materials.

• PEP benefit: Clients can help the regeneration of their places by co-designing diverse tours with and for their local communities, fostering a sense of inclusion and belonging.

Challenge: Most destinations do not have smartphone enabled geolocated experiences that visitors now expect 24/7.

• PEP benefit: Marketers can quickly provide an always-on visitor experience. PEP was designed offline first and optimised for mobile use, meaning visitors always have access to a great experience, even without a mobile signal.

Place Experience Platform in action

Hidden Cities

Hidden Cities is a suite of apps that take users on guided tours of seven different European cities, combining augmented reality, digital placemaking and multi-language support to create an immersive experience that allows visitors to view each place through the lens of the past.

Users are led round the streets of Exeter, Valencia, Hamburg and more, by a fictional guide, who links the places they visit to stories from their own life and times. When the user arrives at each location, the app triggers the audio and site-specific content to display on the device, relaying each location’s narrative in the user’s language of choice – made possible by the multiple language capability of the app.

Salisbury Trails

Salisbury Trails is a prime example of how the Place Experience Platform can be used to support the economic recovery of a place. Following the deadly Novichok poisoning in the city centre in 2018, Salisbury was struggling to attract visitors and urgently needed to support businesses and boost tourism.

Calvium collaborated with Wiltshire Council to deliver a digital service that would enable visitors to discover the city’s unique heritage and points of interest and, hopefully, change tarnished perceptions of Salisbury in the process.

In addition to suggesting places to explore off the beaten track, shopping routes and places to eat and drink, the app also gives people the option to choose to follow defined trails and hear stories about particular attractions.

City of London

The City of London’s City Visitor Trail app launched in 2014, allowing visitors to explore London’s famous square mile on foot through a series of routes. Like many organisations, however, the busy visitor team reached a point where finding the time to add new audio stories and keep the information up to date had become a challenge.

Moving the app to the Place Experience Platform meant the visitor team could update its content in real-time, whenever they pleased, while keeping it in line with other campaigns and marketing materials – ultimately ensuring the app remains a key part of the visitor experience.

Measuring success

PEP’s success metrics relate to the empowerment of our client, the place marketer, in a number of ways.

In addition to reducing ongoing production costs, streamlining production workflow and increasing audience reach, PEP allows place marketers to save time in contractor management, and increase flexibility and opportunities for collaborative production.

The analytics dashboard enhances decision-making by allowing clients to track the usage of key features to reveal visitor preferences, contributing evidence for data-driven analysis of visitor experiences and wider marketing collateral.

For example, when students at the University of Exeter worked with St Nicholas Priory and RAMM museum to create content for the Hidden Exeter app, PEP enabled them to coordinate, produce and present their collaborative work to their community in a widely accessible and engaging format.

The future of the Place Experience Platform

The flexible nature of the platform means it is well-positioned to adapt to new technologies, policies and regulations, as well as changing consumer behaviours. It has an ambitious roadmap and will evolve over time as the requirements of people and places evolve.

Digital storytelling is the fundamental underpinning of the social web. Whether through lengthy musings in a regular blog or a quick social media update, we are all storytellers when we post personal details about our everyday events and stories.

We are also drawn to other human stories. It’s why digital marketing is so effective; it can imbue the product or service with the essence of a related story to connect at an emotional rather than a logical level.

Places can also evoke strong emotional feelings. The chill of a shaded graveyard, the vibrancy of an outdoor market, the ghostly presence of bygone inhabitants in older buildings: the physicality of places plays to all of the senses so that you can literally react to the ambience.

The ability to use digital storytelling to elevate the natural curiosity we have in such places is what provides the magic, and therefore the power to influence. This is something myself and fellow researchers Richard Hull, Kirsten Cater and Constance Fleuriot were exploring almost two decades ago in our ‘Magic moments in situated mediascapes’ paper, which looked at how the distinctive feature of mediascapes is their link to the physical environments.

The findings are still very relevant today, although opportunities to harness the power of place-based digital storytelling are significantly greater now due to advancements in technology. This was one of the driving forces behind Calvium’s Place Experience Platform (PEP), which we launched to support placemaking professionals to enhance people’s experiences of the places they manage.

PEP makes it easy for our clients to create stories themselves or look to Calvium to curate content for them. This article will provide insight on how place-based digital storytelling has the power to entertain, inform and inspire positive change in today’s digital-first world.

Entertain

Classic audio tours have been a popular staple in a visit to a cultural site ever since the original Alcatraz audio tour established the genre in the 1980s. Revealing the lived reality from different perspectives – prisoner or jailer, master or servant, victor or vanquished – is an incredibly effective way for people to connect with a place’s culture and history on a human level. Not only does it bring theatre to a place, it helps to create empathy and intrigue while doing so.

Back in 2004, I was involved in the world’s first geolocated drama, Riot! 1831, which used Bristol’s Queen Square as a storyboard through which events and stories could react to movement to unfold the dramatic historic events at the place they happened.

This is a very early example of storytelling through digital placemaking, although the term hadn’t actually been coined at that point – nor the iPhone launched. It was Riot!, however, that prompted us to publish experience design guidelines and workshops that would support the understanding and evolution of digital placemaking over the years. In fact, it was one of those workshops that influenced the University of Exeter’s Professor Fabrizio Nevola to develop a successful blueprint for creating immersive time travel experiences, and which led to a long-lasting, and ongoing, partnership between Calvium and the University of Exeter.

Supported by our PEP, Hidden Cities is the fruit of that blueprint. The suite of apps take users on guided tours of seven different European cities, with fictional characters creating an immersive experience that allows visitors to view each place through the lens of the past. By linking the places visited to stories from the character’s own life and times, people’s relationships with each European city are enhanced.

Elements of gamification can also extend to classic trails to provide a different incentive to visit places, which is something we have recently incorporated into PEP.

Pokemon Go and its nine million daily active users are testament to the power of place-based incentivisation. Whether for a challenge, scavenger hunt or catching a Pikachu, ensuring the story location is meaningful so the effort to get there is worth the payback is key to achieving maximum impact.

If you’re interested in exploring in greater depth what placemakers can learn from Pokemon Go, download our free whitepaper here.

Inform

Place-based storytelling has a unique role to play in providing information about a place. Not in the way that the likes of Google do by giving a catalogue of information, but by telling the story of a place, its origin and history. Just as blue plaques highlight a notable fact, digital storytelling can provide context and depth to bring it to life, helping to establish cultural norms and values from the past and present.

The Carnaby Echoes app we created for Shaftesbury Plc shows this in action. As visitors walk around London’s Carnaby Street, a host of commemorative plaques at key historic locations reveal the hidden stories behind 10 decades of local music history. The app enables people to be immersed in the sounds, stories and characters that relate to each plaque, providing visitors with a greater connection to the area as they are guided around the area.

In addition to the gamification elements, we have extended the informative capabilities of the PEP as well.

Another important feature of PEP is that it can enable both armchair and onsite mode, which means people can access trails and experiences whether they are at a place in-person or at home. This can help to reduce anxiety as trails give assurance and help with planning – whether on the day when at the destination or when thinking about visiting somewhere in advance.

Positive change for people, place and planet

Having been at the heart of place-based digital storytelling from its very early days to the present day, I see its immense potential to inspire positive change for people, place and planet – especially with the way technology is heading.

For people

As I mentioned at the start of this article, we are drawn to other human stories. Having a greater understanding of the culture and history of different neighbourhoods and cultural mixes can help to enable more empathy for people and places, and so we must be thinking about how digital technologies can be used to achieve this.

The iDetroit app we created for Marcus Lion’s Human Atlas of an American City project highlights one of the ways in which digital can enrich place-based storytelling experiences. The app brought the stories of 100 underrepresented or misrepresented Detroit citizens to life through an immersive digital experience, enabling the user to hear the voices and stories of each individual and therefore connect with them on a much deeper level.

For places

Just like film tourism, which can significantly improve a destination’s visibility and attract potential tourists to places, place-based storytelling has a central role to play in boosting local tourism and economic recovery. In addition to supporting the economies of less visited areas by encouraging visitors to move around the location in a guided way, place-based storytelling creates memorable experiences that make people want to go back to a place, and also tell their friends about it. A win-win for people and places.

For planet

Calvium is increasingly thinking about how PEP can connect to the environment more tangibly, to raise awareness of environmental issues and climate change.

World Without Oil is an early example of this. The alternate reality game, created in 2007, encouraged players to plan for, and engineer solutions to, a possible near future global oil shortage. The most compelling player stories and ideas were incorporated into the official narrative, posted daily.

Some places will naturally lend themselves to gentle activism enabled by place-based storytelling more than others. For example, walking through a nature reserve and being made aware of aspects that could affect it, or walking coastal paths and being informed that the path you’re treading on won’t exist in a year’s time because of rising sea levels.

It’s about finding ways to use those places in a compelling way to drive different thinking and more awareness.

As the Place Experience Platform continues to evolve, we look forward to seeing how it can play a more meaningful role in enabling positive change for people, place and planet.

The global pandemic triggered a near-total shutdown of international tourism to and from the UK. Although borders are starting to open and ‘tiers’ are being allocated on a regional basis, the outlook tends to change daily, making forecasting difficult. Needless to say, we are dealing with uncertainty and therefore should frame all that we design for as uncertain; anticipating many different futures.

Presently, the VisitBritain tourism forecast anticipates a decline of 73% on inbound visits and a decline of 79% in spending, equivalent to £60m a day. Inbound tourism numbers are expected to rise towards the end of the year, but these models are precarious.

Domestic tourism seems to be the saving grace of the tourism industry, even if it’s expected to recover gradually but unevenly across the country. However, the unpredictable local and tiered lockdowns, fear of new Covid-19 spikes in the short-term and general uncertainty about the experience of being in a place is a cause for concern for many visitors — and understandably so.

In this article, I want to explore the opportunities that digital placemaking offers the domestic tourism sector. I’ll look briefly at some challenges, some pre-pandemic sector trends and then shine a light on digital services that are being harnessed to support the visitor economy. I’m also going to introduce Calvium’s new digital placemaking solution – the Place Experience Platform – created to enhance the visitor experience of towns and cities, and support place-based recovery.

The UK’s Tourist Economy in Crisis

The UK could lose up to £22bn in tourism revenues in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, predicts the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). In the worst case scenario, three million jobs would be in jeopardy. This is the real world context within which place leaders and destination marketers are operating, and for anyone entrusted with supporting the local economy and place-based growth, this is a massively challenging time.

Challenges for Destination Leaders and Place Managers

With lockdown easing, the competition amongst towns and cities has become more intense. Winning the attention of a dwindling number of anxious domestic visitors and the few international visitors choosing to explore the UK is a daily challenge for destination leaders. Whilst trying to be mutually supportive as an industry, places in the UK are also in fierce competition with each other, as well as the other international destinations that have opened up.

As I stated earlier, we all have to accept that uncertainty is the ‘new normal.’ Therefore, place leaders need to invest in robust and trustworthy solutions that are also flexible and adaptable. When the context is uncertain, it is imperative to have viable visitor experiences that can be readily adapted to respond to ongoing flux. No more static printed resources, familiar campaigns or standard visitor products, nowadays the astute place strategist invests in the value of mobile-first digital delivery and digital placemaking.

Responsiveness was front of mind when designing the Place Experience Platform. I will talk more about the platform later in the article, but to give a brief overview, it is a digital placemaking solution for place professionals that provides a reliable way of delivering engaging and responsive visitor experiences swiftly, while, at the same time, enabling place managers to guide visitors around destinations as desired and provide up to date information when needed.

Visitor Pain Points

Before August ended, statistics from the Office of National Statistics revealed that 27% of adults were likely or very likely to go on holiday in the UK this summer. In fact, social distancing-friendly destinations like cottages, caravan sites, and holiday parks were booked up and many have taken bookings for 2021 at rates previously unknown.

Visitors clearly want to have a great time, but many are understandably concerned about safety and security when visiting a public place, especially since we’re all wary of not repeating the Bournemouth experience of this summer. Nowadays, tourists demand place assurance, which is why it’s important to give them confidence in all aspects of a destination. They research a place thoroughly prior to visiting, desire up-to-date information during their stay and want to enjoy themselves. A place that fails to deliver on these points, fails to attract or satisfy visitors.

With these challenges in mind, we need to play our part in inspiring people and encouraging them to spend time locally – making their experiences truly positive and memorable. Utilising digital technologies to attract visitors to a destination, help them plan their visit, show them around and provide meaningful connections to the uniqueness of places is a sure-fire way to revive the visitor economy. This can be achieved easily and quickly – with the right partners on board and a collaborative approach.

Pre-Pandemic Tourism Trends

Back in the days of mass tourism (2019!), we were seeing global trends that were poised to shift tourism’s trajectory. These trends are likely to become the norm for most destinations:

Minimise Overcrowding 

Overcrowding in tourist spots brings several issues like alienated residents, reduced visitor experience, unequal distribution and benefit, overloaded infrastructure, threats to culture and heritage, and damage to nature – for starters.

To minimise this, The European Travel Commission (ETC) began to move towards a ‘value not volume’ brand positioning as its marketing strategy for 2019. This strategy involved shifting from a demographic-based market segmentation to a behaviour-based one. Instead of emphasising specific destinations, the ETC started to highlight the experiences from each location, which would disperse tourist crowds more broadly based on their interests and attitudes. This approach is playing out in locations globally and is set to continue, probably spurred on by our recent context.

Environmentally Sustainable Models 

As restrictions started to ease up mid-way through 2020, the One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme, led by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), announced its renewed focus on sustainability for the recovering tourism sector to better prepare the industry from future crises.

This vision, supported by governments and the private sector, will support Sustainable Development Goals, national policies, and individual place sentiment. In line with the programme, six courses of action for people, planet, and prosperity were recommended, including social inclusion, biodiversity conservation, climate action, governance and finance, public health and circular economy.

Place and Localism

Destination strategies are changing. Instead of wooing potential visitors with picturesque images of people sitting by the beach as the sun fades into the horizon, tourism marketing is now focusing on destinations co-created by residents, the industry and visitors.

This is especially apparent in Copenhagen, as the city saw how mass tourism wreaked havoc on the quality of life of residents in cities like Venice and Barcelona. To lessen the effect of tourism once borders are all fully open, the Danish city came up with a solution that will benefit both visitors and locals.

Called ‘localhood for everyone,’ destinations in Copenhagen are encouraged to see visitors not as tourists but as temporary residents. They will be part of the community however long or short their stay is. This can be achieved through a five-point plan that includes:

• Enabling travellers, partners, and influencers to create shareable moments online
• Encouraging repeat visits
• Attracting new visitors from growing markets
• Co-innovation where industries work together
• People-based growth where the goal is not to increase the number of visitors, rather the value of visitors for all.

Digital Services

Place Services and the Rise of Booking Systems

People use digital technologies to engage with a place at all stages of the journey experience lifecycle. This has ramped up massively since the pandemic, so visitors expect to have more digital information and digitally-enabled services post-pandemic.

According to Publicis Sapient, during the third week of March when most countries began their stay-at-home orders, calls flooded company contact centres, with wait times for customers averaging over two hours. One airline even saw half of its customers’ calls unanswered. As visitors will only demand more digital solutions especially when resolving travel concerns, businesses will do well with streamlining digital customer touchpoints, especially for cancellations and rebookings.

Increased Digital Engagement With Visitors

Digital marketing organisations will continue to increase their digital spend considerably. With this, print investment is expected to go down.

As more and more visitors prefer to have updated information in real-time, print, by its static nature, will swiftly be out of date. Digital channels are much more responsive to change, especially since lockdown rules are changing regularly.

Digital Technology at All Stages of the Visitor Journey

With the increased reliance on digital technology, visitors expect to engage with the destination at all stages of their journey – not only as they plan a trip but when they are walking around their destination.

Walk With Me: St Austell is one such digital visitor product. Calvium collaborated with the Kneehigh artists and poet Anna Maria Murphy to create this location-triggered app that narrates wildly exaggerated stories and tales as visitors walk around the St. Austell Bay area. Alight is another location-based app from our team, only this time it gives users more insight into several pieces of sacred art across London, Oxford, Chichester, New York City, and Washington DC.

Both these mobile experiences have a two-pronged benefit. For visitors on-site, they have more control over the locations they will explore as they can see the trail they will follow right from the start. Meanwhile, these apps also have ‘armchair’ modes, which allow users to visit each city without leaving the safe confines of their homes – helping place managers to market their destination.

Place Experience Platform

Place managers need to attract visitors to their destinations and provide the circumstances for visitors to have a safe and enjoyable time. As we can see with the tourism trends, digital technologies are playing an increasingly important role in visitors’ lives and can greatly enhance their experience, which is why Calvium developed the Place Experience Platform –  to provide great and personalised visitor experiences for a destination’s target audiences, now and in the future.

What is the Place Experience Platform?

Calvium’s new Place Experience Platform is designed for those entrusted with supporting the visitor economy. It comprises of:

• The Place Experience App which provides compelling content to visitors by combining wayfinding, storytelling, and real-time information about a destination
• The Place Management System which puts control of the visitor experience into the hands of place managers.

Place Experience Platform is a place assurance service that provides visitors with a ‘sense of place’ that can be aligned with that place’s unique marketing strategy.

Through wayfinding, storytelling and up-to-date information about a destination, place managers have the power to design and map trails that visitors can explore—potentially leading them away from overcrowded locations which can put their health at risk, damage the environment and cause strain in the infrastructure.

How Can Place Experience Platform Support the Visitor Economy?

Place Experience Platform is a visitor companion. The App helps people plan a visit and guides them around a destination, offering them entertaining content as well as more practical place-based information. Key benefits include:

• Supports economies of less visited areas by encouraging visitors to move around the location in a guided way.
• Enables visitor experiences to be changed easily and quickly, according to destination needs and growth strategies.
• Draws visitors away from bottlenecks that: cause long wait times and clustering, strain infrastructure and damage assets, thus reducing associated management spend.
• Simple, reliable and easy to use, putting control in the hands of place managers, thereby providing a responsive and flexible service.

Discover Salisbury Trails Visitor Experience

Salisbury Trails is the first visitor experience product to be released on Calvium’s platform. It was commissioned by Wiltshire Council to support the economic recovery and development of Salisbury. The app enables visitors to move around Salisbury’s streets and discover the city’s heritage, whether that’s locating off the beaten paths, exploring hidden gems, or following some fantastic routes for shopping, eating and drinking in the city centre.

Visitors hear stories about an attraction, read about it and see related images. They can choose to follow defined trails such as ‘Medieval Meanderings’ or ‘Witchcraft, Riots and Treason’ that present them with a range of related information while they walk around. The interface itself provides a seamless experience as the app has been expertly crafted with attention to detail throughout.

Discover Salisbury is available on the App Store or Google Play. Its content does not depend on an internet connection, allowing visitors to access it wherever and whenever they desire.

As part of Salisbury’s economic recovery plans, the Salisbury Trails app is a perfect way to share the heritage of Salisbury with visitors in compelling ways.

Shifting to Digital Experiences

Now is the time for place leaders to rethink visitor and tourism strategies, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned and so many more. We all need to take a radically different approach to how we relate to and respect the places we inhabit, whether as permanent or temporary residents. We need to develop a holistic approach to how we invite people to experience and understand our neighbourhoods and be part of our communities.

Digital placemaking is obviously a core part of any contemporary place strategy and as we’ve seen, there are myriad ways in which digital solutions and digitally-enabled experiences are enhancing people’s experience of places. The Place Experience Platform is one easy and simple digital product for place managers to use as part of their visitor offer, and it can be developed further for the unique conditions and context of a specific destination.

Seize the new thinking and behaviours that the pandemic has prompted alongside the tourism trends that were already in motion, and employ digital placemaking as the way to revitalise your visitor economy.