A Hackathon and Two New Audio Guides in Spittal an der Drau

We have two new tours in Spittal an der Drau! One was developed and implemented during a 3-day hackathon in cooperation with Cultural Places / OROUNDO, Harmony & Care, and the 3AHW class of the Höhere Bundeslehranstalt für Wirtschaftliche Berufe in Spittal. As with the tours on Lake Millstätter See and on Goldeck, these are special guides aimed directly at dementia patients and their relatives. However, they are also suitable for everyone else!

A Special Project

Our partner for these tours was again Vividus, a dementia tourism provider and part of Harmony & Care. They offer an established dementia competence center where guests receive sensitive care. Vividus also helps arrange individual trips – so if you want to book a trip with a person with dementia, Vividus is the ideal contact.

Together we have developed audio guides directly tailored to the needs of people with dementia which are explicitly targeting people with first-stage dementia as well as their family members. To make the content easily accessible, texts were written in easy, understandable language, and care was taken to speak slowly during the recordings. Since there is evidence that dementia patients respond better to female voices, we also used female speakers.

Spittal an der Drau: Architecture, Art, and History

The first audio guide deals with the architecture, art, and history of Spittal. The municipality is located at the meeting point of three rivers – the Drau, the Lieser, and the Möll – and three valleys. Moreover, there are a lot of romantic buildings from different centuries to admire in Spittal. The walk through the city of Spittal an der Drau leads you to the most important historical places and tells about events that are not written in any history book. From the famous Spittl, which gave the town its name, you cross the bridge into the old center to the town hall and Porcia Castle – one of the most beautiful Renaissance buildings north of the Alps. You can feel the Mediterranean flair everywhere here! And do you notice the ghost of Countess Salamanca, whose spirit is said to wander through the old walls? Things are less spooky in the city park, where you can see works of art from the region at the Parkschlössl.

Spittal: We Accompany You Through our Home City

The second tour in Spittal was developed by the students of the 3AHW as part of a hackathon. For three days, they were accompanied by our project manager Anna Cossa, our CEO Patrick Tomelitsch, and Anja Silberbauer, CEO of Harmony & Care. Also present were Director Adi Lackner and the class leader of 3AHW, Petra Götz. The areas of digital tour creation, usage, and promotion of the tour, benefits, as well as a stakeholder, sales, and USP analysis, were discussed in theory – and then it was time for implementation.

The 16 and 17-year-old students then created a concept for a digital audio tour for young and old, selected tour stops, and finally developed the guide. They took photos, wrote texts, and then recorded the audio files in German and English. The result is this audio guide, so you can get to know Spittal from the students’ point of view and listen to their stories!

The first stop of the tour is the so-called “Malbaum”, a landmark from 1970, depicting Spittal’s history and surroundings. Architecture fans will get their money’s worth in the Tirolerstraße, and afterward, we recommend taking a break in the city park. Then it’s off to the town parish church with its life-size wooden figures and the train station, and then on to the wetlands of river Drau, where you can enjoy the fresh air and the view of the river landscape and the high mountains all around from the lookout tower right on the Drau!

Of course, the culinary side should not be missing on such a tour! The students have picked out pubs, restaurants, and cafés that stand out not only for their physical delights but also for their history or unique orientation. The Satisfactory, located near the main square, will let you travel far and wide through dishes from all over the world: in three show kitchens, you can watch the preparation of dishes from different countries – and taste them right afterward!

Free Guides Now Available

Best of all, our guides are available for free via the web and our app, and you don’t need to be on-site to immerse yourself in Spittal’s past and present! And you can find our blog article about the guides at Lake Millstatt here.