FIRST CITY AUDIO-GUIDE PRESENTED IN CHISINAU

The High Anthropological School (HAS) presented the first audio-guide through Chisinau. The unique project was developed by the HAS with the support of “Dromos-tour” tourism agency.

HAS President Mark Tkachuk said that the project represents a new type of GPS-audio-guide, which radically differs from other world-known analogues.

“The development of the project is a result of studying the Chisinau cultural heritage. Besides, a fundamental peculiarity of the guide is that it tells not an impersonal history of the city, not about buildings and attractions. The history, presented in this project is an integral story with events and the lives of people, who lived these events, but not just disconnected pieces”, Tkachuk said.

By means of installing the application on smartphone, the guide allows listening to the Chisinau history while sitting in the office, driving a car or a bike, as well as while walking through the city. The GPS-guide allows listening to the city history to one’s choice: depending on the period, on events, on various objects.

“We managed a guide that does not depend on the guide. While you are walking from one place to another, you will be hearing to the city history. When you arrive to the place you are interested in, you will hear the story exactly about this place. Moreover, the story will be live, with personages and heroes, their experiences and fates. The application may be disabled, may be enabled when necessary tied to the Chisinau map. With such a map, you are not restricted by anything, you are not bind to the route or time. You see what you want and when you want, while the audio-guide helps you study the rich and interesting city history”, the historian and anthropologist stressed.

According to him, the inventors of the audio-guide tried to fill the gap in the studying of the city history, satisfying the demand for different presentation of historical memory.

He also said that in Chisinau there are very few qualified guides, the tourism is very poorly developed.

“We specified the goal to contribute to the decision of these problems. An average excursion through the city with guide costs around 300 lei. This is much. The development of a GPS guide will allow reducing the cost almost five-fold”, Tkachuk said.

The presented project includes six different routes, which may be changed depending on the user’s interests.

Ambassador Peter Michalko, Head of the European Union Delegation to Moldova welcomed the new invention of Moldovan specialists.

“Yesterday I attended the opening ceremony of an IT forum. We talked much about the perspectives of developing this field in Moldova. Today, we can already see how this works in practice. Moreover, this is a visible proof of how historians and anthropologists successfully cooperate with specialists in the field of IT technologies, developing the necessary project in promoting the tourism. We should not forget that tourism is also an important branch for Moldova, which should be developed including by means of such advanced technologies”, Michalko said.

Director of the Tourism Agency Stanislav Rusu recognized that Moldova lacks guides and materials, while the excursions are restricted by just several attractions.

“Such projects are an important support in promoting tourism and attracting tourists to Moldova”, he stressed.

Mark Tkachuk said that the project was worked on within 9 months and the presented version is developers’ first experience. According to him, the application is available only in Russian. The authors plan to create original versions in Romanian and in English, to develop a version for motorists, as well as to replenish the application with new interesting excursion routes.