All the people of Jinan know that when it comes to the true charm of “every household has a spring and every house is covered with poplars”, merely visiting Baotu Spring and Daming Lake is not enough – Baihua Island, which is right next to the south gate of Daming Lake, is the “living specimen” of this old city’s charm. This small lake, covering an area of over 7,000 square meters, is nourished by the Yudai River in a circle. The flowing water from the Zhenzhu Spring Group flows in slowly along the riverbed and then crosses the Quehua Bridge to join the Daming Lake. The willow branches by the shore hang down to the water surface. In summer, the lotus flowers all over the lake bloom under the sun, and even the crevices of the bluestone slabs beneath the feet can seep out spring water. Just a few years ago, tourists who came here often said they were “confused” : they wanted to know where the water of the Yudai River came from but couldn’t find anyone to ask. Foreign tourists stared at the stone tablet of “Baihua Ting” for a long time but couldn’t even understand its name. The elderly man who was traveling in a group was just about to hear the history of Quehua Bridge clearly when the group was already urging him to go to the next stop. The Yingmi 007B self-service tour guide system has solved these troubles. Nowadays, tourists carry lightweight tour guides. Wherever they go, they can hear the stories of the springs and the history of the stone Bridges clearly.
I. The “Tour Guide Dilemma” of Baihua Island: The Thousand-year-old culture is hard to pass on, and the tourist experience is discounted
The uniqueness of Baihua Island determines that its demand for guided Tours is far from being met merely by “simple explanations”. The culture here is not a concentrated display of exhibits, but rather “fragmented treasures” scattered among rivers, Bridges and lotus ponds. Coupled with the demands of multilingual tourists and differentiated tour paces, the traditional guided tour mode has long been inadequate.
1. The culture is dense but scattered, and tourists “can see the scenery but cannot understand the charm”
The core charm of Baihua Island lies in the fact that “every step and every scene is a cultural one” : The Yudai River is not only a scenic river but also an important vein of Jinan’s “spring water connecting the city”. It carries the flowing water of the Pearl Spring Group and witnessed the prosperity of “merchants living along the springs” during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Quehua Bridge is not an ordinary stone bridge. Instead, it serves as a “cultural bond” connecting Baihua Island and Daming Lake. The “Autumn Scenery of Quehua” by the Yuan Dynasty painter Zhao Meng takes this bridge as its perspective Even the weeping willows by the riverside are closely related to the old town custom of “every household weeping willows”.
However, these details are very likely to be missed by tourists if they are not guided. The staff of the scenic area recalled, “In the past, there were often tourists standing by the Yudai River and asking, ‘Where does this water come from?'” When reaching the Quehua Bridge, one only feels that it is “an ordinary stone bridge”, and no one knows its connection with the “Autumn Scenery of Quehua”. A human tour guide can lead a maximum of 8 groups a day, covering a limited number of scenic spots. Most tourists can only have a cursory look around. After visiting, they only remember “there are lakes and trees”, but fail to understand the essence of the “spring water culture”.
What is even more embarrassing is the transmission of “hidden culture” – for instance, the folk custom of “every household having a spring” refers to the life scene of the residents around Baihua Island in the past when they “saw the spring by opening the door and drank from it”. This kind of culture without physical display cannot be fully explained by written signs alone, and manual explanations are difficult to cover all tourists, resulting in many visitors “feeling lonely while wandering around”.
2. Tourists who speak multiple languages gather in large numbers, but the “language barrier” blocks cultural resonance
With the internationalization of Jinan’s cultural and tourism industry, the proportion of overseas tourists in Baihua Island has been increasing year by year. From Southeast Asia, Japan and South Korea to visitors from Europe and America, more and more people want to experience the unique charm of the “City of Springs”. However, the previous guided tour methods made it extremely difficult for these overseas tourists to move forward: they couldn’t understand the Chinese signs, and the multilingual explanations were only arranged temporarily during peak seasons, mostly in basic English. Even the professional translations for “Pearl Spring” and “Jade Belt River” were not uniform, let alone in-depth content such as “The influence of the spring water on the folk customs of Jinan”.
In the scenic area, I once met a French couple who were taking pictures of the “Hundred Flowers Pavilion” stone tablet by the lotus pond. They gestured and asked the staff, “How long is the history of this place?” But no one could explain it in French. In the end, they could only convey it mechanically through a translation software. The couple smiled and nodded, but couldn’t hide their regret. Overseas tourists come here not just to enjoy the scenery, but also to learn about the culture behind the springs. However, due to the language barrier, everything is just scratching the surface. Teacher Li, who is in charge of overseas reception, said helplessly.
3. Tourists’ paces vary greatly, and the traditional model “restrains their steps”
The tourist group at Baihua Island is extremely diverse: there are families bringing their elderly to savor the spring water slowly, and they want to sit by the Quehua Bridge for a longer time to listen to the stories of old Jinan. Some young tourists want to visit the core attractions efficiently and then head to the next stop. There are also photography enthusiasts who, in order to wait for the morning mist over the lotus pond and the stone bridge under the setting sun, will stay in one place for a long time.
However, traditional manual explanations can only be advanced along a fixed route and at a fixed pace – tourists who want to stroll slowly are “urged” by the team, while those who want to stroll fast have to wait for others, greatly reducing the experience. A retired elderly person gave feedback: “Last time when I was on a tour group, just as I was about to hear clearly the flow direction of the spring water in the Yudai River, the guide said, ‘Everyone, follow up. The next stop is the lotus pond.’ I had to leave in a hurry and felt extremely unhappy.” “
4. The operation and management pressure is high and the combination of manual labor and old equipment is “inefficient and costly”
To alleviate the shortage of tour guides, the scenic area once attempted to increase the number of manual tour guides, but the cost remained high, and it would take at least three months to train a professional familiar with “spring water culture + multilingual interpretation”. Later, simple tour guide devices were introduced, but they were particularly difficult to maintain due to their complex operation, short battery life, and susceptibility to damage – some devices required individual plugging in wires to charge, and it took one hour to fully charge 50 devices. Some devices have poor anti-interference performance and are prone to disconnection near springs, leading to continuous complaints from tourists.
During that period, we were both afraid that the tourists would have a bad experience and that the equipment would break down. We were constantly “mending holes” every day. The operation supervisor of the scenic area said, “We urgently need a tour guide system that can ‘work independently and be well managed and used’, and the emergence of Yingmi 007B has precisely solved our immediate problem.”
Ii. Yingmi 007B: The “Intelligent Cultural Interpreter” Tailored for Baihua Island
After learning the core pain points of Baihua Island, Yingmi did not simply push general equipment but sent a technical team to the site for a week By testing signals along the Yudai River, recording cultural nodes where tourists gather, and statistically analyzing multilingual demands, a customized solution centered on the 007B self-service tour guide was finally launched – from “automatic sensing” to “multilingual adaptation”, from “convenient operation” to “worry-free management”, every function precisely meets the tour guide demands of Baihua Island.
1. Automatic sensing + precise recognition: Wherever you go, talk about it without missing any cultural details
The most surprising feature of 007B for tourists is its “seamless trigger” function – it adopts advanced RFID modulation technology and infrared sensing for dual protection. Tourists do not need to perform any operation. As long as they walk within 0.5 to 40 meters of the designated cultural node, the tour guide machine will automatically trigger the corresponding explanation. It will neither announce in advance nor miss any information, nor will it be interfered with by the signals of adjacent scenic spots.
For instance, when tourists reach the “Pearl Spring Living Water Inlet” (the connection point between the Yudai River and the Pearl Spring Group), 007B will automatically ring: “What you are seeing now is one of the sources of the Yudai River. The water from the Pearl Spring Group flows into Baihua Island through here. The water is clear and has a high oxygen content. This is also the reason why the willows along the bank are lush and the lotus flowers are blooming vigorously…” ; When reaching the Quehua Bridge, the guide will naturally switch: “This Quehua Bridge was first built in the Yuan Dynasty and is an important transportation node in the old city of Jinan. The Yuan Dynasty painter Zhao Meng ð« youdaoplaceholder3 ¯ once stood here and created the famous’ Autumn Scenery of Quehua ‘, capturing the beauty of Jinan’s mountains and waters on paper.
The technical team also specially optimized the signal for the “spring environment” of Baihua Island: considering that the humid environment may affect the equipment’s sensing, the transmitter of 007B adopts a waterproof design, and the signal strength supports 16 levels of adjustment. Even in rainy days or areas close to the water surface, the sensing remains accurate. During the testing in the scenic area, the staff carried the equipment and walked repeatedly along the banks of the Yudai River. The accuracy rate of the explanations at the 20 cultural nodes reached 100%, and there was not a single instance of “crosstalk” or “omission”.
2. Multilingual + customized content: Enabling overseas tourists to “understand and resonate”
In response to the internationalization needs of Baihua Island, 007B natively supports eight languages (English, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Arabic), and additional languages can be customized according to the requirements of the scenic area. The content of the explanations in each language is not a simple “direct translation of Chinese”, but is adapted to the cultural background of overseas tourists. For instance, when explaining “Every household has a spring” to European and American tourists, it is added that “this lifestyle of ‘bringing spring water into households’ is similar to the’ public drinking water spring ‘culture in some ancient European cities, but the springs in Jinan are closer to the daily life of residents.” Help them understand quickly.
Thomas, a tourist from the UK, after visiting Baihua Island for the first time in the English mode of 007B, specially found the staff to give feedback: “Before, when I visited many Chinese scenic spots, I could only rely on translation software to read the introductions, which was very boring.” But this time, with the tour guide, I could clearly hear the connection between Quehua Bridge and the “Autumn Scenery of Quehua”, and also learned how the spring water influences the lives of the local people. This kind of “culture that can be understood” is truly attractive.
In addition to the fixed language, 007B also supports “key content enhancement” – for instance, in response to the interest of Japanese and South Korean tourists in “lotus pond culture”, during the explanations in the lotus pond area, additional content such as “The differences between lotus varieties in Jinan and Japan” and “a comparison of lotus pond poetry in China and South Korea” will be added to make cultural resonance stronger.
Iii. Implementation Achievements: The “New Changes” of Baihua Island, a win-win situation for Both Tourists and the Scenic Area
Half a year after the 007B self-service tour guide was introduced to Baihua Island, there have been visible changes in the tour guide experience, cultural transmission efficiency and operation management of the scenic area. These changes are not only reflected in the data, but also hidden in the feedback from tourists and the daily work of the staff.
1. Upgraded tourist experience: From “sightseeing” to “understanding the charm”, with a satisfaction rate of 98%
According to the statistics of the scenic area, after using 007B, the average stay time of tourists has increased from 1.5 hours to 2.8 hours, and the proportion of tourists who have “in-depth Tours” (covering more than 15 cultural nodes) has risen from 30% to 65%. The complaint rate of overseas tourists has dropped from 25% to 0. Many overseas tourists have shared their experiences of “visiting Baihua Island with 007B” on social media platforms, and even attached videos of English explanations played on the tour guide machines.
A tourist from Shanghai came to visit with his parents and gave feedback, saying, “My parents are getting old. Before, they always couldn’t hear clearly when they were in a tour group. This time, they used 007B and turned up the volume themselves. They could hear wherever they went. They also listened to the story of Quehua Bridge over and over again. When they left, they said, ‘This time, I truly understand the springs in Jinan.'”
2. Deeper cultural transmission: Tourists take the initiative to explore, and the knowledge retention rate increases by 50%
The most surprising thing for the scenic area is that 007B has transformed tourists from being “listened to” to “actively exploring” – a student team used the manual on-demand function to listen to all the explanations related to the spring water and even recorded the questions they didn’t understand to ask the tour guide. Some photography enthusiasts, in order to listen to the exclusive explanation of “Morning Mist over the Lotus Pond”, specially got up early and came to the scenic area before the park opened. Even some local residents revisited Baihua Island with 007B, saying, “I never expected there to be so much unknown history right at my doorstep.”
The cultural knowledge test conducted by the scenic area shows that the retention rate of knowledge points such as “the flow direction of Yudai River Spring Water”, “the history of Quehua Bridge”, and “the connection between Pearl Spring and Baihua Island” among tourists using 007B has increased by 50% compared to the traditional tour guide mode, truly achieving the goal of “culture entering the brain and heart”.
3. Reduced operating costs: Labor costs are reduced by 40%, and management efficiency is doubled
On the operational side, the introduction of 007B has reduced the cost of manual tour guides in scenic spots by 40%. The reception capacity that originally required six tour guides can now be handled by just three. The efficiency of equipment management has also been significantly enhanced. Previously, it took two staff members one hour to manage 50 old devices. Now, with the use of storage boxes and charging boxes for 32 007Bs, one person can complete charging, storage and inspection in 30 minutes, saving a considerable amount of manpower.
“Before, the first thing I did every day at work was to check the equipment and adjust the channel of the tour guide. Now, I just need to look at the indicator light of the charging box to make sure the equipment is fully charged. This way, I can focus more on providing services to tourists.” ” The equipment administrator of the scenic area said.
Conclusion: The resonance of spring sounds and intelligence makes culture accessible
Nowadays, when visiting Baihua Island, one can always see such a scene: overseas tourists wearing the 007B audio guide devices stop by the Quhua Bridge following the explanations. The old man turned up the volume and listened carefully to the story of the spring water in the Yudai River. The child, holding the audio guide, excitedly requested the music video of the lotus pond… The tinkling of the spring water and the clear explanations interweave to form a vivid picture of “the coexistence of tradition and intelligence”.Yingmi has always believed that a good intelligent tour guide device should be like the spring water in Baihua Island – natural, considerate, nourishing precisely without disturbing. In the future, Yingmi will continue to optimize the functions of 007B, such as adding AI voice interaction and expanding to more languages, to make it adaptable to more cultural scenarios around the world. This will enable every precious cultural heritage to “speak” through intelligent technology, and allow every tourist to understand the warmth of culture