In the long term, the impact of Covid-19 on the visitor attraction sector might not be significant. But in the short-to-medium term, visitor attractions, especially those currently operating, have had to implement measures to support the fight against the pandemic. Midwich shares its thoughts on the challenges faced by the sector.
David McIntyre, business manager for video at Midwich, says: “We’re seeing a discussion around how we can change or manipulate the current technology at visitor attractions but still make sure it retains an element of interactivity. There are discussions around eliminating touchpoints and avoiding press buttons by adding voice interaction or providing connectivity using personal devices or QR codes, which have seen a rebirth. Of course, the change needs to be implemented by leveraging the existing hardware and perhaps by adding on a few modules.”
As a regional distributor, Midwich has a wide portfolio of products that can help visitor attractions combat the challenges faced today including reducing the need for physical interaction as much as possible.
“BrightSign brings a number of features relevant for visitor attraction applications and products such as BrightLink, BrightMenu and BrightVoice, were swiftly introduced and adapted to answer the market’s desire for Covid-19 solutions that help avoid contact and touch,” explains Liz Cooke, AV technical support technician from Midwich.
“BrightSign has numerous paths for upgrade that will push visitor attractions towards touchless and contactless operation. BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – is where more and more people feel comfortable and nearline broadcast devices connected to an individual’s own device via QR code scanning technology offer simple and highly effective solutions for touchless control.”
In the visitor attraction sector and on the whole, the role of technology is being
reimagined to combat the disruption in the market.
“BrightSign also has a position in the visitor attraction space for wayfinding applications and is, in some ways, the glue that holds everything together,” McIntyre details.
“You can have any number of peripherals and devices and be plugged into other ecosystems as well. You can take your assigned hardware and you can work with any number of different CMS providers, input widgets, GPS trackers and more.”
“What we are finding through our conversations is that the AV industry and system integrators are facing very different and complex challenges,” observes McIntyre.
“We are looking to put together strategies for touchless solutions, meeting room solutions and more and these strategies are serving to push the conversation forward. Our focus is less transactional at the moment. We are finding that conversations are snowballing, and we are quickly learning there is no hard
and fast rule to follow in these times. We are leveraging our experience and going on what we are seeing in the market and using that to inform our decisions."
“As a value-added distributor, we are looking to deliver support and services for our channel,” McIntyre concludes.
“Our intention is certainly not to replace the role of the integrator or consultant but to offer value-added services that can assist with addressing the problems we face today. You can imagine, a partner of ours may not specialise in a particular product or a particular vertical but they might have come across a business opportunity that they would like to drive through. In this case, they can leverage our resources. We are building quite a deep technical team and believe these resources absolutely help the channel.”