National Park Service Audio Guide Pilot

MEMORANDUM

TO: Glenn Eugster

FROM: Matt Hoffman

VP Business Strategy, BeyondGuide

DATE: June 20, 2001

SUBJECT: National Park Service Audio Guide Pilot

Following our meeting last week, the BeyondGuide team is very excited at the prospect of developing an audio guide that will assist the National Park Service in achieving its goals of developing thematic links among the 14 National Capital Region sites and enhancing its visitors’ experiences.

BeyondGuide would like to propose an immediate, low-cost, short-term project in conjunction with the National Park Service: implementing a pilot demonstration of an audio guide service at eleven National Capital Region NPS sites in the Washington, DC area. The purpose of this demonstration is to allow BeyondGuide to prove to you our capabilities, to study how NPS visitors use the audio service, to allow NPS staff to work with the service so they can better understand how they might want to customize it, and to explore operational issues.  BeyondGuide will be able to provide NPS with data on the number of unique callers at each site, what types of information visitors are interested in at each site, and how many and which sites each caller has visited.

BeyondGuide proposes to make this service free of charge to NPS visitors for the duration of the pilot.  We propose to make content information available at 10 NPS sites via a unique toll free number that visitors can dial when visiting these attractions. For example, visitors to the Washington Monument would receive a free audio guide to that site via their cellular phone by dialing into a toll-free number. To make visitors aware of the audio service and to facilitate as much usage as possible for analysis, we would request that the National Park Service post a sign prominently at each location informing visitors that this service is available.  We would not expect any of our corporate branding on the signage; it would simply need to say “Listen to a free audio guide to the Jefferson Memorial on your cell phone 866-XXX-XXXX.”

We suggest a three-month duration for this project, commencing August 1 or sooner, to capture visitors through the remainder of the 2001 tourist season in Washington. 

There would be no cost to the end user for using the service. The only cost borne by the National Park Service to initiate this three-month trial would be the posting of signage.

The following are the eleven sites we suggest for deployment based on the fact that we have already produced approximately ten minutes of audio for each sight and could start immediately:

Washington Monument

Lincoln Memorial

FDR Memorial

The National Mall

Petersen House/Ford’s Theater 

Jefferson Memorial

C&O Canal

Lafayette Square

Washington Canal Lockhouse

Old Stone House

Frederick Douglas House

Following the 3-month pilot demonstration, Beyondguide proposes that we jointly analyze the data we have collected to determine the viability of jointly developing a customized audio guide for NPS for 2002 that would allow you to provide your own interpretation of the sights, develop thematic links among all of your NCR areas, and design data collection systems.

We appreciate the opportunity to work with NPS and bring to its visitors the first audio guide delivered over cell phones.  Please let me know if there is additional information I can provide or if you have any comments or questions about this proposal.

Hopefully, we can meet again shortly in order to determine next steps.