Platform presence of audio guides by regions of Kazakhstan: quantitative and qualitative analysis

Abstract

Object: Qualitative and quantitative research of audio guides in the context of the regions of Kazakhstan, presented on the izi.Travel platform.

Methods: Bibliographic analysis, methods of systematization and grouping, a content analysis method, a qualitative research of the content of audio guides, audiovisual content and routes.

Results: The main results of the research can be conditionally divided into two main groups: the first is the results of a bibliometric analysis, which showed that the number of publications directly related to the izi.Travel platform is small, while there are more than 70 for the query “audio guides”. In general, this suggests that the scientific direction under study is a new economic phenomenon that is gaining momentum and is relevant and necessary for the further development of excursion activities and the tourism economy; the second is the results of a qualitative and quantitative research of audio guides presented on the platform by regions: for example, their total number is 94, tours are presented by types - 53 units and audio guides for museums - 41 units; speaking of languages, the majority of audio guides are in Russian (81 audio tours), English (58 audio tours) and Kazakh (53 audio guides).

The following locations are presented on the platform: Ganyushkino, Naurzum, Sarayshyk, Uralsk, Akkum, Aktau, Aktobe, Alma-Ata (Almaty), Arystanbab, Atyrau, Zhympity, Kabanbay, Karaganda, Kokshetau, Kostanay, Mikhailovka, Nur-Sultan, Petropavlovsk, Rudny, Satpayev, Semey, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent. Qualitative analysis showed that, in general, many audio guides are presented in a standard way, but, as a rule, they contain quite capacious and complex information about objects; at the same time, there are routes that are creative and unique, including: the city of Almaty – “Museum of rare books”, “SPUE Museum of Folk Instruments named after Ykhlas”, “Excursion to the Museum of Arts named after. A. Kasteyev with audio descriptions^[2] [3]”, “Metro Almaty”, “Tourist bike route”, “Multimedia center of traditional music”, “Women of the Great Steppe”; the city of Kostanay – “Museum of computer technology”, “In the footsteps of the teacher-educator Ibray Altynsarin”; the city of Karaganda – “Murals of the city of Karaganda”, etc.

Conclusions: Despite the available audiovisual routes through tourist sites and territories of the country, their number is small; at the same time, several tours have not been developed sufficiently, which affects the overall quality of the content listened to by the tourist.

Introduction

In the context of widespread digitalization, the transition of countries to the formation and active development of digital economies, tourism activities have for a long time reflected and applied a variety of information and communication technologies, including platform solutions that have become an excellent communication tool that allows tourists / sightseers / the visitor at any convenient time to get acquainted with the display objects in the territory of a particular destination. Examples include:

• international: izi.Travel, TravelMe, VoiceMap, Tours&Travels, PocketGuide Audio Travel Guide, AZBO, World Tour Audio Guide, Qwixi Tour and others;
• country and city: Dubai Travel Guide, Audio Guide Israel, Paris Travel Guide, Czech Audio Guide, New York City Travel Guide, Istanbul Travel City Guide, My Rome – Tourist audio-guide, Discover Scotland, Venice offline audio guide, Audio Guide Georgia: offline, Audio Guide Bulgariа and many others;
• created for special objects (tourist places), museum and events: Louvre Museum: Audio Guide, Hagia Sophia Audio Guide, Hermitage Museum, Uffizi Museum, Bosphorus Cruise Audio Guide, Stonehenge Audio Tour and others.

It is important to note that izi.Travel is one of the largest platforms containing audio guides for different countries and regions of the world. It combines routes of different thematic focus, offering high-quality content content for show and story objects.

The platform was created in 2011; its uniqueness lies in the ability not only to use ready-made excursion offers, but also to develop your own in places and objects that were not previously known to travelers, but definitely of tourist interest.

For today, izi.Travel is presented in the desktop version, as well as in the PlayMarket and AppStore, and you can notice an annual increase in the number of downloads. The main advantage of the platform is the ability to use the audio guide at any time convenient for the tourist, as well as for those objects that the tourist would like to visit the most.

It is important to note that some of the developed routes are freely available, some are presented in the form of paid content, the price of which varies depending on the number of objects included in the route, as well as on the quality of the content and the presence of additional interactive elements that accompany the tour (several languages, VR and AR - technologies, maps, etc.).

Given all of the above, it should be noted that the purpose of the article is a qualitative and quantitative research of audio guides in the context of the regions of Kazakhstan, presented on the izi.Travel platform.

The following tasks were defined: conducting a scientometric analysis for the search queries “izi.Travel” and “audio guides” in the Web of Science database (Clarivate Analytics); research the number and content of audio guides on the izi.Travel platform in the context of the regions of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The hypotheses of the research are the following: 1. on the izi.Travel platform there is at least one audio guide in the context of each region of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which includes the most famous sights and show/story objects; 2. the contents of the audio guides are presented with high-quality audiovisual and textual information.

Literature Review

The conducted scientometric / bibliometric analysis showed that the number of publications that directly consider aspects of izi.Travel is small, while there are more than 70 of them in the search query “audio guides”. This is partly due to the applied nature of the platform itself, which is little studied from a scientific point of view. The main period when there was an increase in articles on the issues under study was 20182019 (Table 1). The explanation for this is the popularization of platforms of this kind in the world, the transition of many forms of tourism activities (primarily museum business) to the active use and offer of various audio guides, the use of various information and communication technologies that reduce costs, accelerate interaction between service providers and the client, as well as to expand the presence in the market (24/7).

ECONOMY Series. № 2(106)/2022

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Platform presence of audio guides...

The general characteristic of citations for the search query “izi.Travel” shows that the total number of citations was 9, while the average index per article is 1.5. The h-index is fixed at 2: this means that 2 articles have been cited at least 2 times (Table 2).

Among the most cited publications are the following:

1. Promoting historical irrigation canals as natural and cultural heritage in mass-tourism destinations (Ricart et. al, 2019) // Journal Of Cultural Heritage Management And Sustainable Development;
2. Participatory Storytelling, 3D Digital Imaging and Museum Studies: A case study from Sicily (Bonacini et al., 2018) // 2018 3rd Digital Heritage International Congress (Digital heritage) Held Jointly With 2018 24th International Conference On Virtual Systems & Multimedia (VSMM 2018);
3. The Regional Archaeological Museum Paolo Orsi of Syracuse: from traditional fruition to digital platforms (Santagati, 2019) // Capitale Culturale-Studies On The Value Of Cultural Heritage;
4. Participatory digital storytelling as a didactic tool in cultural dissemination (Bonacini and Marangon, 2021) // Cuadernos De Filologia Italiana;
5. New Technologies In Smart Tourism Development: The #Izitravelsicilia Experience (Giaccone and Bonacini, 2019) // Tourism Analysis;
6. Managing The Geography Of Complexity, From Data To Stories: The Biographical Paths Project Between Public Archeology And Urban Regeneration (Mariotti, 2019) // Archeologia E Calcolatori.

Also we can see that some surnames are repeated several times. For example, Bonacini, Elisa is the author of more than 15 publications in the field of the use of modern information technologies in tourism and museum activities^*, one of the few foreign experts studying the aspects of using the capabilities of various platforms for creating audio guides, primarily izi.Travel.

Similarly, consider citations for the search query “audio guides”. Here one can notice that the total number of citations for the entire body of work was 385; 1 article, on average, accounts for 5.35, while the Hirsch index is 12, which indicates a fairly high level of citations of the studied materials. Table 3 presents the authors and titles of publications that are most often cited (TOP - 10), among them are:

1. An Augmented Reality Museum Guide (Miyashita et al., 2008) // 7th IEEE International Symposium On Mixed And Augmented Reality 2008, Proceedings.
2. User experience of museum technologies: the phenomenological scales (Pallud and Monod, 2010) // European Journal Of Information Systems.
3. Engaging Visitors in Museums with Technology: Scales for the Measurement of Visitor and Multimedia Guide Experience (Othman et al., 2011) // Human-Computer Interaction - Interact 2011, PT IV.
4. Impact of Mediation Devices on the Museum Visit Experience and on Visitors' Behavioural Intentions (Jarrier and Bourgeon-Renault, 2012) // International Journal Of Arts Management.
5. Deep Artwork Detection and Retrieval for Automatic Context-Aware Audio Guides (Seidenari et al., 2017) // ACM Transactions On Multimedia Computing Communications And Applications.
6. Effect of AR-based online wearable guides on university students' situational interest and learning performance (Yu et al., 2019) // Universal Access In The Information Society.
7. Combining traditional and indirect augmented reality for indoor crowded environments. A case study on the Casa Batllo museum (Gimeno et al., 2017) // Computers & Graphics-UK.
8. Enhancing visitors' experience in art museums using mobile technologies (Tesoriero et al., 2014) // Information Systems Frontiers.
9. Engaging Constable: Revealing Art with New Technology (vom Lehn et al., 2007) // Conference On Human Factors In Computing Systems, Vols 1 And 2.
10. The Art of Pervasive Eye Tracking Unconstrained Eye Tracking in the Austrian Gallery Belvedere (Santini, 2018) // Pervasive Eye Tracking And Mobile Eye-Based Interaction (PETMEI 2018).

It should be noted that, as in the first case, a large array of publications concerns the development and use of audio guides in museum activities, including the use of virtual reality technology, which became a popular digital tool during the COVID-19 pandemic among millions of online users of tourist and excursion services.

According to the portal Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics): https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/3451635.

D.G. Mamrayeva, L.V. Tashenova, M.P. Ayaganova

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Methods

As research methods were used:

 bibliographic analysis, which made it possible to update information on publication activity within the framework of the scientific problem under consideration, through the creation and analysis of search queries for such masks as: 1. “izi.Travel”; 2. “audio guides” as part of the scientometric database Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics); the depth of the array was 47 years (from 1975 to 2022);

 methods of systematization and grouping, which made it possible to quantify the presence of audio guides on the izi.Travel platform in the context of the regions of Kazakhstan;

 content analysis method, which made it possible to comprehensively research the composition of the audio guide, its audiovisual content, route thread and content (including in several languages, if the audio guide was presented on them).

Results

Analysis of the izi.Travel platform showed that the total number of audio guides in the Republic of Kazakhstan is 94 units. In terms of types, there are: tours - 53; museum audio guides - 41; quests are missing. Based on this, it can be seen that in total izi.Travel includes three types of audio tours, which are systematized and conveniently presented on the platform. The main languages of all audio guides analyzed in the Republic of Kazakhstan are Russian (81 audio tours), English (58 audio tours) and Kazakh (53 audio guides). The general characteristics of all audio tours in the Republic of Kazakhstan on the izi.Travel platform are presented in Table 4.

The locations presented on the platform are as follows^*: Ganyushkino, Naurzum, Sarayshyk, Uralsk, Akkum, Aktau, Aktobe, Alma-Ata, Arystanbab, Atyrau, Zhympity, Kabanbay, Karaganda, Kokshetau, Kostanay, Mikhailovka, Nur-Sultan, Petropavlovsk, Rudny, Satpaev, Semey, Taraz, Turkestan, Shymkent. The number of audio guides within these regions and sites, as well as their examples, are presented in tables 5-9. ^{[4] [5] [6]}

According to the data presented in Table 5, it can be seen that there are only 12 audio guides for Western Kazakhstan on the izi.Travel platform, covering such objects of the region as: the museum of the Kurmangazy district, the historical places of the city of Aktau, the Aktobe Regional Museum of Local History, the State Historical - cultural museum-reserve “Sarayshyk” and others. So, for example, a tour of the local history museum of Atyrau region contains a fairly detailed route and interesting content: Atyrau region - hall “Mystery of the century” - hall “Culture and literature of the region” - hall “Ethnography” - hall of Archeology - hall of the Great Patriotic War - Hall of Independent Kazakhstan - the hall of the history of the region, covering the 12th-20th centuries. - Museum of History and Local Lore of Atyrau region - Kulpytasy - Nature of the region - Fauna of the Quaternary period on the territory of the Caspian Sea. At the same time, of course, the presented guides are not enough, since the tourist and recreational potential of the region is quite high.

Table 6 reflects the quantitative characteristics and threads of routes for tourist sites in Northern Kazakhstan.

Table 6. General characteristics of audio guides in Northern Kazakhstan presented on the izi.Travel platform

Note - compiled by the authors according to the portal izi.Travel.

So, according to the table, there are about 24 audio guides in the region, each of which has its own uniqueness and interesting content. One of the most detailed is: “Streets of the city of Rudny”, created by students of the secondary school No. 1 of the education department of the city of Rudny, which includes 69 route points (Figure 1).

Table 7 audiovisual routes in East Kazakhstan were analyzed.

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Вестник Карагандинского университета

Only 6 audio guides are presented on the territory of East Kazakhstan, 5 of which are for the objects of the cities of Uralsk and Semipalatinsk, 1 - the branch of the regional local history Museum of Semey in the village of Kabanbai Urzha. The region, having a very high tourist and recreational potential, unfortunately, does not actually develop and place on one of the most popular platforms in the world - izi.Travel digital audiovisual tours of its attractions.

The leading region in terms of the number of audio guides presented on izi.Travel is South Kazakhstan - 50 units, some of which are presented in several foreign languages at once (Table 8).

Table 8. General characteristics of audio guides in South Kazakhstan presented on the izi.Travel platform

Table 9 presents the characteristics of audio guides in Central Kazakhstan, the number of which does not exceed 2 at the time of the analysis, one of them is the development of a research team and students of Karaganda University named after academician Y.A. Buketov – “Murals of the city of Karaganda”. It should be noted that within the framework of the project of the university research team “Development of urban tourist routes in Central Kazakhstan based on using of smart technologies in the context of digitalization of tourism” in 2023, routes such as “Geometry of the city” (sightseeing tours of the display facilities of the cities of Karaganda, Temirtau, Zhezkazgan), “Where? Where? In Karaganda!” (a walk through the famous and unusual monuments of Karaganda), “Karaganda is a forge of knowledge”, “Shady alleys, fountains and parks of Karaganda”, “Balkhash - the pearl of Central Kazakhstan”.

Table 9. General characteristics of audio guides in Central Kazakhstan presented on the izi.Travel platform

In general, we can distinguish the following number of audio guides in the context of regions:

1. Almaty - 43;
2. Kostanay - 14;
3. Akmola - 9;
4. East Kazakhstan - 6;
5. Atyrau - 4;
6. Mangystau - 4;
7. Turkestan - 4;
8. West Kazakhstan - 2;
9. Aktobe -2;
10. Zhambyl - 2;
11. North Kazakhstan - 1;
12. South Kazakhstan - 1.

It should also be noted some non-standard and, of course, interesting, unique routes available on the platform, by regions:

1. Almaty city^*: “Museum of Rare Books”, “SPUE Museum of Folk Instrumentsnamed after Ykhlas”, “Excursion to the Museum of Arts named after A. Kasteyev with audio descriptions”, “Metro Almaty”, “Tourist bike route”, “Multimedia center of traditional music”, “Women of the Great Steppe”;

2. Kostanay city: “Museum of Computer Technology”, “In the footsteps of the teacher-educator Ibray Altynsarin”.

In general, it should be noted that in the context of regions there is a small number of audio guides. Their increase, qualitative improvement would increase the tourist attractiveness of objects and regions, form a favorable image, and enhance their recognition through free placement and open access. As the analysis showed, only a small part of all audio tours on the platform is presented in several languages at once, basically, many of them are posted using one or two languages, usually Kazakh / Russian, or English.

The analysis also showed that there is no system for the unified development and upload of audio guides to the izi.Travel platform by the regions and the state. Many of the developed and analyzed routes in tables 5-9 were created by schools, universities, directly by museums and memorial complexes, only a small part - by professional companies (Center Smart Tourism, Kazakh Research and Design Institute of Material Culture LLP), tourist information centers, offices and departments for tourism development. In this regard, the regions need to intensify their work on developing audio tours and uploading them to izi.Travel, creating high-quality content in several languages (including foreign ones), since, given the huge audience of the platform, this can become a powerful driver for popularizing objects among potential, and real foreign and domestic tourists and sightseers.

Discussions

The most important aspect of the functioning of the modern tourism industry, as mentioned above, of course, is the use of a variety of modern digital tools and technologies that reduce costs, the period for providing services to the client, and also significantly improve the quality of the provided excursion services, adding interactivity and increasing the tourist experience. interest in the objects of display and story on the territory of tourist destinations.

At the same time, a small number of publications devoted to the problem analyzed in the article, first, due to the novelty of the scientific issues under consideration, and, secondly, the complexity and versatility of the phenomenon under consideration, allows us to talk about the emerging new and relevant scientific direction in the tourism economy, the study of which requires comprehensive and timely research. In this regard, the scientific novelty of the work is beyond doubt since no developments related to the research of the quantitative and qualitative content of audio guides in the context of the regions of Kazakhstan were found. This work is of a pronounced theoretical and practice-oriented nature, as it gives a succinct idea of the current state of excursion activities from the standpoint of the presence of audio guides on various platforms, including one of the most popular and developed in the world - izi.Travel.

At the same time, the question of further content filling of systems with audio guides, their numerical quantity, which is “sufficient”, remains open, since excursion activity is a dynamically developing industry that requires not only serious technological and methodological solutions, but also an integrated approach to develop the thematic orientation of routes, which are new and capable of attracting an increasing number of potential and real consumers to the regions where they are represented.

Conclusions

In general, the research made it possible to obtain a quantitative description of the audio guides presented on the izi.Travel platform in the context of the regions of Kazakhstan. In particular, it was determined that the total number of interactive routes with relevant content is 94, while most of them are presented in Russian, English and Kazakh languages; there are also audio guides in Turkish, Chinese and German, but not so many. The leading regions in terms of the number of developed audiovisual online excursions are Almaty, Kostanay and Akmola regions.

In turn, a qualitative analysis of the content of audio guides made it possible to conclude that there are photos and videos accompanying the tourist on the route, while not all content is up to the mark; also, for some audio guides, the thread of the route and the textual accompaniment of the objects of the show and story were not fully worked out.

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. AP09261199).

References

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