Travel is no longer just about what you see but about how deeply you can immerse yourself in the experience.
In the age of augmented reality (AR) and digital guides, a company at the forefront of this tech-powered cultural exploration is Tiqets. The Amsterdam-based ticketing platform isn’t just helping travelers skip the line; it’s reinventing how we engage with museums, landmarks, and city streets through immersive technology.
From ancient art sprouting modern digital overlays to personal tour guides that live in your smartphone, Tiqets is integrating AR and interactive digital guides to make sure your next trip is nothing short of a 21st-century adventure.
Museums and Landmarks Come Alive with AR
Imagine standing in a grand museum hall and raising your phone to a centuries-old painting. Suddenly, the figures on the canvas spring into motion, telling their stories through AR animations.
This is not science fiction – it’s happening now in museums around the world. Tiqets has spotlighted numerous attractions embracing AR to enrich their exhibits.
At Barcelona’s famed Casa Batlló, for example, visitors can use provided tablets loaded with AR content to “go back a century in time and see spaces the way Gaudí once did”. The still walls of Gaudí’s modernist masterpiece literally come to life, thanks to augmented overlays that reveal the architect’s inspirations and hidden details.
Over in England, families visiting Legoland Windsor embark on an AR treasure hunt through the park’s Mythica zone. By scanning plaques beneath statues of mythical creatures – think chimeras and hydras – kids (and kids at heart) watch dragons and lions spring to life through their phone screens and even snap selfies with these fantastical beasts.
The accompanying Legoland AR app transports guests to magical realms, complete with gamified quests to collect digital “orbs” and cards, making a day at the park an interactive storybook adventure. It’s a perfect example of how AR can turn a static attraction into a living, breathing narrative that engages visitors of all ages.
Even observation decks are getting an AR upgrade. At Paris’s Montparnasse Tower, traditional telescopes have morphed into high-tech AR viewers. Peering through these viewers doesn’t just magnify the city – it layers digital information atop the real skyline.
On a foggy day, you might “see” a clear panorama of Paris with labels, historical facts, and 3D reconstructions appearing as you gaze toward the Eiffel Tower. This augmented storytelling turns a simple lookout into an educational voyage through time and space, catering especially to young visitors who might otherwise grow bored of an ordinary view.
Perhaps most magically, AR is resurrecting art and history that have been lost to time. At the National Museum of Singapore, an AR-enhanced app lets visitors stand in the exact spot where a 42-foot whale skeleton once hung and behold it in its former glory.
By holding up a Tango-enabled device, museum-goers can overlay the present with the past – from long-gone architectural details (like a 1950s tiled floor appearing over today’s marble) to entire exhibits from decades ago. “The emergence of digital and future technology has opened many doors for museums worldwide and we now have the opportunity to redefine the conventional museum experience,” says Museum Director Angelita Teo.
AR is doing exactly that: redefining museum visits from passive gallery strolls into dynamic voyages where history literally materializes around you.
Digital Apps Redefining Tourism
Not long ago, exploring a new city meant joining a crowded tour group or thumbing through a guidebook. Today, all you need is a smartphone and a good app.
Tiqets understands that modern travelers crave freedom and personalization, which is why they’ve integrated digital guides and audio tour apps directly into many of their ticketed experiences. The result? You can roam at your own pace, while a virtual guide in your pocket shows you the way.
Take a stroll through Paris with the Tiqets audio guide app in hand, and you’ll quickly see the appeal. Instead of following an umbrella-toting guide, you pop in your earbuds and wander where curiosity leads you.
The app will automatically play stories and tidbits about nearby points of interest – from the history of Notre Dame to the quirks of Montmartre – triggered by your GPS location. With over 100+ points of interest packed into the guide, it’s like having a personal storyteller on call.
Better yet, the app comes with offline interactive maps and navigation, so even if you duck into a hidden alley, you won’t lose your way. As Tiqets puts it, you can “say au revoir to traditional tour groups” and explore on your terms, with location-based suggestions taking care of the rest.
Digital guide apps aren’t just for city streets; they’re enhancing landmark visits too. Consider the Uffizi Gallery in Florence – one of the world’s great art museums, but overwhelming for the uninitiated. Tiqets offers an Uffizi audio guide app by POPGuide that you download straight to your phone, turning a maze of Renaissance masterpieces into a curated journey.
As you move from Botticelli to Caravaggio, the app feeds you rich commentary by local experts, complete with images and stories that illuminate each artwork. It’s like touring with an art historian, minus the rigid schedule.
And because these guides live on your phone, accessibility and convenience are baked in – the content is multilingual, you can replay commentary, and you’ll never need to jostle around a placard or strain to hear a human guide.
Crucially, these digital guides also promote inclusivity in travel. Travelers with hearing impairments can read descriptions or see visuals on their own device. Those who prefer a certain language or learning style can tailor the experience to their needs.
Even neurodiverse visitors or anxious first-timers can benefit: having a personal guide app means being able to preview and prepare for experiences at one’s own comfort level. It’s no surprise that many tour and transport operators are following suit.
Tootbus, the hop-on-hop-off bus partner in Tiqets’ London Bar Bus experience – equips its tour buses with free Wi-Fi and a custom app featuring “Tootwalks,” self-guided city walking tours that guests can take after hopping off, as well as multilingual audio commentary in 10 languages onboard.
From buses to boats, the message is clear: in modern tourism, if you’re not integrating digital guides or apps, you’re already behind the curve.
Partnerships Powering Immersive Travel
Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. Tiqets has been actively forging partnerships to amplify the impact of AR and digital guide technology in travel. These collaborations range from content integrations to infrastructure boosts – all aimed at making cultural exploration more seamless and engaging for travelers.
One notable partnership is between Tiqets and Touch Stay, a digital guidebook platform for hospitality providers. This clever tie-up allows hotels and vacation rentals to embed Tiqets’ booking engine directly into their own guest guide apps.
In practice, that means when guests scroll through a digital welcome book looking for things to do, they can instantly book a museum visit or attraction ticket (often with skip-the-line perks) via Tiqets without leaving the app.
It’s a win-win: travelers get curated recommendations and easy booking at their fingertips, while hosts earn commission and brownie points for enhancing the guest experience. “We’ve partnered with Tiqets, the leading online platform for booking museums, attractions, and experiences worldwide,” the Touch Stay team announced, noting that this integration helps “give guests seamless access to top-rated cultural experiences” right from a digital guidebook.
Essentially, Tiqets is not just a ticket seller, but an enabler embedded in the digital ecosystem of travel planning and discovery.
Another forward-thinking collaboration addresses a more fundamental need: connectivity. In June 2024, Tiqets teamed up with Firsty, a mobile eSIM provider, to ensure travelers can stay online anywhere in the world. It might not sound flashy, but it’s pivotal for AR and digital guide usage – after all, your high-tech AR museum app or city guide is useless if you can’t get data on the go.
Recognizing this, Tiqets now offers its customers easy access to Firsty’s eSIM through the Tiqets app, even throwing in a free day of high-speed data for first-time users.
Laurens Leurink, CEO of Tiqets, explained that joining forces with Firsty furthers Tiqets’ mission to make culture accessible: by removing connectivity barriers, travelers can effortlessly access “digital tickets and key information no matter where they are” and discover the world seamlessly.
In other words, Tiqets doesn’t want spotty internet to be the reason you miss an immersive digital experience. With global mobile data in your pocket, you’re free to dive into that AR art tour or download that audio guide at a moment’s notice, no matter what foreign shore you find yourself on.
Tiqets has also attracted heavyweight partnerships that signal its commitment to innovation. The company has a strategic alliance with Trip.com Group, one of Asia’s largest online travel agencies, to expand instant access to cultural attractions.
And let’s not forget its investors include travel giants like Airbnb – a clear nod towards a shared vision of blending travel with tech. While these deals might not directly put AR in your hand, they underscore Tiqets’ growing influence and ability to champion new tech initiatives on a global scale.
When a platform that has served 50 million customers starts pushing immersive tech, the ripple effects across the industry are significant.
Culture for All
Beyond the wow factor, there’s a deeper importance to Tiqets’ AR and digital guide endeavors: accessibility and engagement. Immersive technology has a unique power to break down barriers – physical, linguistic, or cognitive – that have traditionally limited who can enjoy cultural sites.
By leveraging AR and digital content, Tiqets and its attraction partners are opening doors for a more diverse audience to connect with culture.
For one, these innovations greatly enhance multilingual access. Digital audio guides can be offered in a dozen languages at the tap of a screen , allowing non-English-speaking visitors to enjoy a museum in their mother tongue without having to join a special tour or rent a device.
AR overlays can provide on-screen text or sign-language videos for the hearing impaired, or simplify content for kids and those new to the subject matter. The National Gallery in London demonstrated this beautifully with its AR-powered children’s app, “The Keeper of Paintings and the Palette of Perception.”
This gameified experience challenged young visitors to solve puzzles and find clues related to paintings, effectively turning a stuffy art museum into a playful treasure hunt. It was so successful in engaging kids on-site that the gallery later adapted it for at-home use as well.
By meeting audiences where they are – be it a child with a short attention span or a remote user – digital experiences like this make art and history accessible in new ways. As one museum expert noted, “Far from acting as a distraction, technology can be used to bring people closer to the artifacts and history a museum exhibit is exploring.”
That sentiment is echoed in every AR exhibit that recreates a lost whale skeleton for someone who can’t climb stairs to see the real one, or every app that lets an autistic traveler preview a crowded gallery in VR before braving it in person.
Immersive tech also makes cultural exploration more interactive and inclusive for those with different learning styles. Some people learn by listening, others by doing or observing. AR and apps often blend multiple media – audio narration, visual aids, even haptic feedback – to cater to all kinds of learners.
Consider the example of the Smithsonian’s AR-enhanced Bone Hall: visitors use a tablet to scan skeleton exhibits and trigger 3D animations of how the animals would have moved. A traditional exhibit might only offer a static skeleton and a block of text (great for strong readers, not so much for others).
The AR version provides a kinetic visual lesson in anatomy that’s far more memorable and illuminating, especially for young or hands-on learners. In a similar vein, many museums are using AR to add multisensory layers to exhibits – from seeing how ancient frescoes originally looked in vibrant color to hearing the ambient sounds of a Renaissance marketplace through your headphones.
All these enhancements serve one goal: to make sure that a visit isn’t a one-size-fits-all lecture, but a personalized adventure that resonates with each visitor.
A Future of Boundless Exploration
As AR and digital guide technology mature, we’re edging closer to a world where the line between physical and digital travel experiences blurs. Tiqets’ forays into these technologies hint at an exciting future for globetrotters and culture enthusiasts.
We’re talking about possibilities that until recently felt like sci-fi. Think wearable AR glasses that overlay ancient city ruins with full reconstructions as you walk through them, or real-time translations and subtitles appearing in your view at an opera. Some of this is already in pilot phases; much more is coming.
Tiqets is positioning itself to ride this wave. The company’s own blog mused about the rise of the “tourism metaverse”, noting that travel lovers are naturally drawn to VR and AR – the same adventurous spirit that sends someone backpacking also makes them willing to don a headset for a virtual voyage.
We’re already seeing metaverse-like previews: want to tour the Louvre from your living room? Pop on a VR headset and Tiqets will gladly sell you a virtual experience that might entice you to book the real trip next. Museums are exploring digital twins and NFT art galleries (like Amsterdam’s MOCO Museum with its “Mocoverse” ), and you can bet Tiqets will be the platform helping to ticket those virtual venues alongside the physical ones.
Importantly, Tiqets emphasizes that augmented reality might be the more accessible stepping stone for many attractions venturing into high tech. It suggests a future where every major attraction has its own AR app or AR layer – perhaps provided or promoted by Tiqets – so that visitors can unlock bonus content simply by pointing their phone at a statue or scanning a QR code on a museum wall.
Leaders at Tiqets are certainly thinking big. “We’re furthering our mission to make culture more accessible and allowing travelers to discover the world seamlessly,” CEO Laurens Leurink said in reference to integrating advanced mobile data for travelers.
That seamless discovery is precisely where travel is headed. You might buy a simple entry ticket on Tiqets in 2025, but by 2030 that ticket could come bundled with an AR-enhanced guide, an AI-powered translator, and an interactive itinerary that adapts to your interests in real time.
In the not-so-distant future, visiting the Colosseum could mean seeing gladiators battling via hologram, and a trip to the Great Barrier Reef might include an underwater AR display identifying each fish species as it swims by.
What’s most encouraging is how these technologies can enrich cultural understanding. Instead of replacing real travel, they add layers to it. Tiqets, with its blend of tech savvy and cultural focus, appears committed to using AR and digital media to amplify the reasons we travel in the first place: to learn, to be amazed, and to feel connected to places beyond our own world.
As Tiqets celebrated delivering its 50 millionth experience, the company noted it has spent a decade “transforming how the world accesses culture and attractions”. Augmented reality and digital guides are simply the newest tools in that mission.
Travel in Action
The integration of AR and digital guides into travel isn’t just a tech trend – it’s a storytelling revolution. Every traveler becomes the hero of their own adventure, with technology as the magic that reveals hidden plotlines in each destination.
A generation ago, you might visit the Roman Forum and try to picture the grandeur of ancient Rome from scattered columns. Now, with projects like Journeys Through Ancient Rome, you can don AR glasses and watch a gladiator stride past reconstructed temples, overlaying the empty field with the roar of a long-gone crowd.
The story of the place unfolds around you in 360° detail. Similarly, an unassuming Amsterdam canal house can transform into an immersive canvas of Van Gogh’s dreams and nightmares in a digital art exhibition. Tiqets makes these experiences bookable to the masses, ensuring that immersive art and history aren’t confined to the elite or the tech-savvy – they are available to anyone with a curiosity to explore.
Perhaps the greatest triumph of Tiqets’ embrace of immersive tech is how it enhances the engagement between visitor and venue. When technology helps travelers interact more deeply, it turns tourists into participants rather than passersby.
And that engagement often translates to greater appreciation and preservation of culture. Visitors who play an AR game in a museum or unravel a city’s secrets via app are likely to leave with a more memorable experience and a story to share. Museums and attractions benefit from this word-of-mouth and from appealing to a broader, digital-minded audience.
It’s telling that Disney, the master of storytelling, used AR lenses on Snapchat to celebrate Disney World’s 50th anniversary – characters popping into the real park to delight guests. If Disney is merging theme parks with the metaverse, it’s a signal that blending real and virtual worlds resonates strongly with today’s visitors.
In the end, travel has always been about immersion – getting lost in a new city, time-traveling through history, or plunging into a different culture. AR and digital guides simply offer new pathways to that immersion.
Tiqets is lighting those pathways with innovation, ensuring that whether you’re peering through a futuristic viewer on a Parisian rooftop or following an app through the backstreets of Kyoto, you’re not just seeing a destination – you’re experiencing it in vivid, enriched detail.
The message to travelers is clear: pack your curiosity and your smartphone, and get ready for a journey where the real and the augmented blend to create memories you never imagined. The world has more stories to tell than ever and now, they’re right at your fingertips.
