Shaping immersive tourism solutions: how EPIC is designing the future of visitor experiences

Seeing a city from above in a helicopter is undoubtedly one of the most striking ways to understand the urban structure, landscapes and main attractions at a glance. But what happens if that helicopter ride is not real, and instead fully recreated through immersive virtual reality? FlyOverPrato is the name that the EPIC project has given to its moving virtual reality platforms simulating helicopter flights over key city landmarks and tourism attractions. These platforms will be at the core of the two Virtual Rooms that will integrate virtual reality and artificial intelligence to promote and deliver Prato’s tourism offer in an innovative way.

Beyond the technical solutions that Prato is adopting to develop a never-ending tourism experience, accessible both online through a metaverse platform and on-site through Virtual Rooms and Virtual Corners installed in different locations of the city, the process itself is reshaping how tourism services and products are designed. The creation of immersive content requires the contribution of multiple disciplines and forms of digital expertise, and is prompting a broader reflection on how local heritage and productive sectors like textile can be narrated and enhanced through advanced technologies.

How to design an immersive experience

The definition of functional and communicative objectives and the identification of the main target groups are the first steps for building any virtual reality experience. In the case of Prato, the challenge is even greater, because a wide variety of potential users (with very different levels of familiarity with immersive technologies) will be interacting with the system designed to tell the story of the city’s past, its textile heritage and its industrial tourism assets through virtual reality and artificial intelligence tools.

“Creating an immersive experience is like making a movie” says Guglielmo Boggia, COO of the EPIC project partner Immerxive, whose team has previously developed immersive training tutorials also for technical industries producing turbines or compressors. The process begins with a storyboard that defines the tools corresponding to different actions, forming the basis for the user experience and user interface design of the experience.

The complexity in designing these experiences increases depending on the type of digital environment and interactive objects created. When the task involves reproducing an urban landscape, such as a city centre or an aerial view, the challenge is to make navigation smooth, realistic and engaging for the users.

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The integration between artificial intelligence and virtual reality is at the heart of the innovative model fostered by EPIC. The virtual reality system will be voice-controlled, allowing visitors to interact with virtual content while navigating the FlyOverPrato experience. This technology, which is completing the testing phase, will be validated before being deployed and installed in the two Virtual Rooms equipped with the Volocopter platforms and in ten Virtual Corners located in hospitality structures across the city. The development of messages, storytelling elements and interaction modes, carried out with the project partner Awhy specialised in virtual assistants, marks a significant shift: the narrative component is leading the process, while technical tools are just supporting the narrative that the city wants to deliver with the combination between the metaverse and artificial intelligence.

Immersive tourism in Europe and the EPIC technological model

While digital travel tools and platforms have developed rapidly to become virtual travel assistants providing all necessary information before a trip, several European destinations are now pushing the boundaries of immersive engagement during visits. Augmented reality apps are widely used in museums and historical sites to enrich the visitor experience. The creation of controlled environments is definitely easier at a technical level also in terms of creating “edu-tainment” experiences to narrow storytelling to specific locations. Guiding visitors through open urban spaces with immersive tools, however, remains more complex.

After having tested the use of virtual reality for interactive visits to the Campolmi Factory, which is the first experiment of virtual reconstruction of a former textile industrial space, Prato is now going further with EPIC, redefining how tourists interact with local attractions by merging immersive technologies, artificial intelligence-driven responses, and flexible narrative structures adaptable to different users’ interests.

Overcoming the current limitations of interaction in virtual reality systems and achieving smooth integration between artificial intelligence and virtual reality are key priorities for the developers of the EPIC project partners. The installations at the Textile Museum and Manifatture Digitali Cinema will serve as testbeds for the user experience, technical performance and effectiveness of the narrative, as part of broader activity programmes promoting industrial tourism.

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The horizontal reuse of the digital content across different platforms is another innovation fostered by EPIC. Immersive materials produced for the Virtual Rooms will also be integrated into the Prato Metaverse, making them more accessible remotely and ensuring long-term scalability. The immersive content will not only enrich on-site visits but will also encourage tourists to explore additional attractions in person. At the same time the technologies themselves are new attractions for specific categories of visitors, such as film professionals and younger creatives. 

This is particularly relevant at Manifatture Digitali Cinema, a regional hub for audiovisual productions managed by Fondazione Sistema Toscana, partner of EPIC. Usually frequented by industry professionals and trainees in fields such as costume design and digital editing, this site will also host one of EPIC’s Virtual Rooms. The virtual reality experience will act as a showcase of Prato’s hidden heritage for film professionals and enthusiasts. As Luigi Formicola, coordinator at Manifatture Digitali Cinema, explains: “The important thing is that, after experiencing it, people are then encouraged to go and see these places in person. You live that experience at a different moment. The key to the narrative lies in its uniqueness, finding that clue that makes the story special and inspires people to visit afterwards”.

Combining immersive technologies and tourism promotion

The finalisation of the digital solutions that will be installed in the Volocopters placed in the Virtual Rooms and in the Virtual Corners is only the technical stage of a broader collaborative process.  

The selection of key city landmarks by the Prato municipality and the ongoing development of the industrial tourism itineraries by Cristoforo tour operator - another EPIC partner – are being integrated into the immersive narrative and the artificial intelligence-driven responsive system that will guide visitors through their virtual journey.

Immersive technologies also have strong potential for enhancing visits to local textile factories. For example, they can show processes and machinery that are not accessible to the public for safety reasons: a potential development that shows the crucial role played by the immersive experiences as a stable part of the industrial heritage tourism offer of the city.

The collaboration among different types of actors, also including the owners of the local factories who will provide useful elements on the industrial content to be showcased, is one of the most distinctive elements of a project like EPIC that is fostering an unprecedented dialogue among subjects who would not normally be involved in the development and promotion of virtual and on-site travel itineraries. “Different skills and expertise in the area working together is something priceless. It is difficult to achieve this objective in normal circumstances, and without a project like EPIC it would hardly be possible at the local level” says Guglielmo Boggia, COO of Immerxive.

The development of immersive experiences is also generating new opportunities for local digital industries. These tools, initially designed for industrial tourism, can be adapted for creating virtual itineraries targeted at industry professionals, for instance film crews scouting new shooting locations, creating a generative loop in which tourism promotion, cultural industries and territorial attractiveness reinforce one another through a fluid combination of the physical and the digital.