It’s dark in the tower, but there they are, the seven bells, the ringing heart of Old Peter in the middle of Munich’s old town. The oldest, the “Zwölferin”, has been ringing the midday bells for more than 600 years, the largest, the anniversary bell, is almost two meters high and sounds deeper than any other bell in town, says tour guide Tobias Röckl to his audience.
It does what city travelers expect from their guide: it leads to places you would not get without him. And strictly speaking, you don’t normally get into the belfry of the oldest parish church in Munich with him. The ascent of the tower takes place virtually, only Röckl himself is standing in the belfry and now has to hurry to get outside again, because the hands of the clock move inexorably towards the next stroke of the bell. His audience sit in front of the screen: The tour was originally a live stream, it is now available on Youtube and Facebook.
The digital tours were not planned when Röckl and his colleague Synthia Demetriou started their company “Ludwig & Lola City Tours” in spring 2020. But then Corona came. The hotels closed, the borders tight, no city tourists, no tour groups, neither from abroad nor from within Germany.
From one day to the next nothing worked for the several thousand city guides in Germany, no tours, no income and hardly any financial support, reports Maren Richter, chairwoman of the Federal Association of Tour Guides in Germany (bvgd). Around 7,500 guides are organized there, and Richter estimates that there are around twice as many in Germany. The tours live from their knowledge, from the stories that are not in any travel guide, but also from the performance, sometimes even in historical costume, from the opportunity to ask questions and look behind the scenes. Some city guides are gifted entertainers, others have a special relationship with children, and still others report touching personal experiences.
Can this be implemented on digital platforms without seeing, hearing, smelling or touching the city in three dimensions? Without the listeners, already exhausted from the video conferences on the working day, dawning away like they once did with grandpa’s slide show from their last vacation? It quickly became clear to Synthia Demetriou and Tobias Röckl that they would try, if only to have something to do during the long period of lockdown, “for our own mental health,” says Röckl. And this is how virtual live city tours were created in the home office: In a good mood, the two city guides play the balls as moderators, thanks to green screen technology, what they are talking about is always in the background, the audience can ask questions, comment, participate.
They benefited from the technical know-how that Röckl brought with him from the media industry. “The learning curve was still huge,” he says. A 360-degree camera is now part of the equipment, and a sign language interpreter can also be displayed. And the two city guides have learned that “the entertainment value digitally has to be that little bit bigger”.
Many companies booked in order to offer their employees a bit of variety, at least virtually: “We sang Christmas carols and organized digital beer tastings,” says Demetriou. There was “astonishingly little” competition with similar offers, and they found inspiration primarily in the USA.
Synthia Demetriou can now lead groups through the city again. But the digital offers should stay.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
And because they themselves had so much fun broadcasting out into the world, out of the confines of the lockdown, the free live streams were also created, from the Nymphenburg Palace Park, from the Viktualienmarkt, from the Old Peter, but also on the anniversary of the liberation, from the concentration camp memorial in Dachau. It is important to Tobias Röckl that such a topic can also be implemented digitally in an appropriate manner; you can feel this when the guide, who is certified for tours through the memorial, tells about it.
Digital storytelling as an opportunity to let those who otherwise remain invisible have their say – including at the Berlin association “Querstadtein” one tried to make a virtue out of the Corona emergency. The non-profit organization organizes city tours on the topics of homelessness as well as flight and migration. The tours are led by people who know what they are talking about because they were without an apartment or had to leave their home. There were 770 tours in 2019, with groups of visitors from all over the world, with school classes or young women and men who completed a voluntary social year.
“In 2020 we actually wanted to expand the offer,” says managing director Selina Byfield. But instead, with the first lockdown, the question arose whether it would go on at all. They saved themselves through crowdfunding and subsidies – and through two digital projects. So an app takes you on “life on the street”, not only in Berlin, but wherever the user opens the app. Video reports from the “Querstadtein” city guides are combined with interactive elements, “for example the task: take a picture of a place where you could sleep,” explains Byfield: “It’s about seeing your own surroundings from the perspective of people, who live on the street. “
The idea was very popular, for example in virtual seminars on political education for young people. The app will therefore continue to be offered as well as an audio walk with “Voices from Zoo Station”, in addition to the “real” tours that have been possible again since early summer.
In any case, business is only slowly starting up again, reports Maren Richter from the tourist guide association. Especially in the big cities, “two years ago there was still enormous demand”, the interest is still very low, there is a lack of bus trips and international groups. It looks better in small towns and rural areas. Above all, open tours are in demand, Richter learns from colleagues, in some cases the tendency is “towards the pre-Corona level”, also thanks to the trend towards tourism in Germany and the increased desire for home tours.
A hygiene concept had already been drawn up at the end of the first lockdown: starting points in less crowded places, smaller groups, cashless payment options. In addition, members can now use the platform die-gaestefuehrer.de Present with their tours and thematic focuses – that, too, is digitization that will remain.
Synthia Demetriou and Tobias Röckl, the two Munich city guides, are also back on the streets and squares of their city in a completely analogue manner. But the digital offers are to become an integral part of the “Ludwig & Lola” portfolio: the virtual Wiesn tour has already been designed.