Brewing success: How SmartGuide digital tour guide transforms the Pilsner Urquell Brewery experience for foreign visitors

Nestled in the heart of Pilsen, the world-famous Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum is a testament to a rich brewing heritage. Its commitment to offering captivating tours for visitors has recently undergone a significant transformation, thanks to SmartGuide. This innovative digital tour guide has supplemented the intermittent live-guided tours conducted in various foreign languages and redefined them.

With SmartGuide's multiple language support, the brewery now enjoys enhanced flexibility in its tour offerings. Foreigners can effortlessly participate in any available tour time slot, irrespective of the language of the live guide. This digital intervention has been pivotal in elevating customer satisfaction, intensifying tour utilization by foreign visitors, and consequently, optimizing the brewery's revenue stream. Additionally, through the examination of visitor demographics, behavior patterns, and content interaction, the brewery has been able to upgrade its tours and improve communication with guests. This approach has significantly influenced the establishment's visitor flow and efficiency.

Let's see how Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum, the largest tourist attraction in the Czech Republic, has integrated SmartGuide into its operations - illustrating how digital audio guides have become a pivotal tool in transforming the landscape of the tourism industry.

Embracing digital audio guides at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum

Steeped in history and tradition, the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum stands as a renowned landmark in Pilsen, a city celebrated for its brewing heritage. Established in the 19th century, this brewery gave birth to the world-famous Pilsner beer style. Visitors flock to this iconic attraction to immerse themselves in the captivating story of Pilsner beer, explore the historic cellars, and sample the unfiltered version of the legendary brew.

However, the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum faced a significant hurdle in its mission to cater to a diverse, global audience. The live-guided tours, primarily conducted in the local language and with just a few infrequent time slots in other languages, failed to accommodate the linguistic diversity of foreign visitors. These limitations also curtailed visitor flexibility, as the tours were available only at specific times.

Furthermore, the availability and cost of employing multiple live guides proficient in various languages presented an additional challenge. It became evident that the brewery and museum needed a more flexible, accessible, and cost-effective solution. That's where SmartGuide came in. As a digital platform designed to revolutionize the tour experience and operational efficiency of tourist attractions globally, SmartGuide offers a digital audio guide system with self-guided tours, immersive audio stories, and interactive features. These elements promised to enhance the visitor experience at the brewery and museum.

SmartGuide offers another compelling benefit by enhancing the attraction's visitor capacity which results in reduced crowding, and minimized waiting times for visitors, creating a win-win situation for both the attraction and its patrons.

The Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum leveraged SmartGuide’s digital tour guide system to offer self-guided tours to its visitors, with an immersive audio guide that narrates stories about each of the points of interest at the Brewery tour.

Each visitor needs to book a slot in one of the available tour groups. The group tours have a maximum capacity of 40 persons, ensuring an intimate and immersive experience. There's also an option to tour the bottling facility, one of Europe's most modern, processing an impressive 120,000 bottles and 60,000 aluminum cans per hour. Thanks to SmartGuide, visitors can join any available time slot and listen to an audio guide in their language.

Navigating challenges and providing opportunities: How SmartGuide transformed the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum experience?

The Pilsner Urquell Brewery, a key attraction in the heart of Europe, faced several challenges that hindered its ability to provide an optimal experience for its diverse audience. The decision to partner with SmartGuide heralded a new era, providing effective solutions to these obstacles.

1. The brewery and museum experienced difficulties in providing live-guided tours for foreign-speaking guests in sufficient capacity and frequency (e.g. German once in 2-3 hours).

This limitation resulted in a less immersive experience for non-native speakers who couldn't fully appreciate the rich history and brewing process.

Solution: The multilingual capability of SmartGuide enabled the brewery to offer comprehensive tours in numerous languages, thereby ensuring a more inclusive and enriching experience for visitors, regardless of their linguistic background.

2. Visitors had to wait for hours for a guided tour in their language. The rigid scheduling of guided tours posed a barrier for spontaneous visitors, reducing their flexibility to explore the site.

Solution: SmartGuide allowed visitors to join the Brewery tour at any upcoming time slot, reducing the waiting times and increasing the visitor flow and flexibility.

3. In the Brewery Museum in the city center and at the Pilsen Underground tour, there was no guided tour option available.

Solution: SmartGuide allowed visitors to start the tour at any time, catering to last-minute plans and enhancing overall satisfaction. Visitors can start the tour whenever they want, without having to worry about scheduling or booking in advance. In addition, visitors can choose which parts of the tour they want to focus on and can skip over parts that don't interest them.

4. Ensuring visitor safety while maintaining an engaging experience became a significant challenge during the pandemic.

Solution: SmartGuide introduced a contactless solution to safely explore the museum and brewery. The visitors could maintain social distancing norms while enjoying a thorough self-guided tour.

SmartGuide has improved the operational model of the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum, setting a benchmark for tourist attractions, tour operators, tourism boards, Destination Management Organizations (DMOs), and travel businesses. This forward-thinking digital audio guide solution significantly enhances the tourist journey, fostering a more inclusive, interactive, and safe touring environment.

Steering transformation: The implementation of SmartGuide at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum

The integration of SmartGuide's digital tour guide solution into the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum was an endeavor that demanded diligent planning and execution. The goal was to offer a digital guide alternative along with live-guided tours, especially to foreign visitors.

The initial step involved a thorough examination of the existing setup and tour processes to identify potential integration points for SmartGuide. Factors like the layout of the brewery and museum, the flow of tours, languages offered, and visitor points of interest were carefully considered.

Upon completing the analysis, the SmartGuide was incorporated into the existing infrastructure. This included developing custom digital audio guides in various languages and implementing a system of floor stickers for easy navigation. All staff both at the ticket office as well as the live guides were thoroughly briefed about the digital guide option and how to communicate it to visitors. Special stickers with QR codes were designed to be put on the physical tickets in order to provide visitors with a straightforward way to get the digital audio guide.

Despite facing challenges such as aligning the audio guide with the physical tour route and managing the shift to a more flexible guiding system for foreign visitors, the SmartGuide and Pilsner Urquell team succeeded in overcoming them, also thanks to a significant time spent on-site to optimize the customer experience.

The successful implementation of SmartGuide has significantly enhanced the visitor experience at the Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum, underscoring SmartGuide's dedication to improving tourism experiences globally.

Transforming visitor experience: The remarkable Impact of SmartGuide's implementation at Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum

The inherent flexibility and accessibility of the SmartGuide tour guide system have caused a more efficient use of the tour capacity on site. The digital audio guide's intuitive interface, providing museum audio tours in multiple languages, and its self-guided nature, empower foreign-speaking visitors to explore at their own time preference, not having to wait for a guided tour in their language.

Now, more visitors can participate in and learn from the tours, resulting in increased ticket sales.

Transitioning to a digital audio guide system has also indirectly facilitated a more efficient allocation of resources towards elements that directly improve the visitor experience.

Also, SmartGuide's ability to analyze visitor demographics, behavior, and content consumption offers valuable big-data insights. These understandings are instrumental in optimizing tours and communication with visitors.

Conclusion: Harnessing the power of SmartGuide for a redefined visitor experience

Innovative solutions like SmartGuide are instrumental in transforming the tourism industry. With features that offer multi-language support, adaptability, and a user-friendly interface, this digital platform has enhanced visitor experiences and stimulated greater engagement at Pilsner Urquell Brewery and Museum.

In the digital era, tools like SmartGuide are essential, paving the way for success in the competitive tourism industry. For everyone from tourism boards and destinations to travel businesses, using SmartGuide's digital travel guide platform represents a progressive strategy for reaching new heights in tourism.

Keen on improving visitor engagement and enriching experiences at your tourist attraction or historical site? Contact us and see how SmartGuide can upgrade your offerings.