Beyond the Gallery: 6 Ways to Use a Museum Tour App for Outdoor Engagement This Fall

It is a familiar challenge for many curators and coordinators: the initial buzz of a major exhibition begins to fade, and you are left looking for ways to sustain that momentum. While much effort goes into the indoor experience, the change in seasons often presents an opportunity to meet visitors where they are: outside.

Being a vibrant part of your community often means establishing a presence beyond your gallery walls.

The good news is that you likely do not need to build a new platform from scratch. The solution can often be found in your existing museum tour app.

When used effectively, this tool can serve as a bridge to your community's wider culture and history, creating opportunities for a deeper, more immersive experience that extends into the local landscape.

A Digital Platform for Cultural Tourism

Your app has the potential to become a portal to local history, guiding visitors through parks, historical sites, or city streets.

A museum tour app is more than just a digital docent for indoor exhibits; it is a flexible tool for creating self-guided outdoor experiences. This fall, the cooler weather offers a natural backdrop for telling stories that exist right in your neighborhood.

The Downtown Carleton Place BIA provides a practical example of this approach. They developed a self-guided scavenger hunt centered on Hardy Boys author Charles Leslie McFarlane to engage families with local history.

With over 1,300 completions in just 30 days, the project demonstrated how a focused, story-based tour can make local heritage feel more interactive and accessible to a broad audience.

6 façons d’utiliser une application de musée pour attirer les visiteurs à l’extérieur cet automne

• Seasonal Scavenger Hunts: Autumn is an ideal time for themed scavenger hunts. By creating a series of digital clues that lead families to historical landmarks or public art, you can gamify local history and encourage people to explore their surroundings.

• Historical Walking Tours: You can use your museum tour app to highlight the evolution of your neighborhood. Pinning points of interest (POIs) with archival photos and audio clips helps visitors connect with the people and architecture that shaped the area.

• Indigenous Heritage Trails: Collaborating with local Indigenous communities to share stories and the deep history of the land is a meaningful way to offer an educational experience. This approach helps ensure that storytelling is respectful and grounded in authentic local knowledge.

• Architectural Highlights: In urban settings, a tour focused on unique local architecture can encourage residents and tourists to look at familiar streets in a new light. These tours work well when they highlight the specific designers and history behind key local structures.

• Public Art & Sculpture Parks: If your community has a collection of public art, a curated digital tour can bring those pieces to life. Including artist interviews or contextual background can turn a simple walk into an engaging, self-paced learning experience.

• Haunted History Tours: As October approaches, haunted history tours often see high engagement. Thunder Bay Tourism utilized this interest by turning a local house-decorating contest into a guided digital tour. This initiative resulted in a notable increase in engagement, showing how seasonal themes can drive significant traffic to your digital content.

Key Takeaway: Extending your reach beyond the building is often about leveraging the digital tools you already have to share stories that are waiting to be discovered right outside your front door.

Foire aux questions

Q : Comment une application muséale peut-elle aider à l’engagement des visiteurs?

A: A museum tour app can help move visitors from a passive role to an active one. It provides a way to offer rich context through audio and video that visitors can access on their own schedule. These interactive elements often lead to longer engagement times and can help you reach people who might not typically visit a traditional gallery.

Q: Is a museum tour app difficult to manage?

A: Most modern platforms are designed for ease of use, featuring content management systems that do not require technical expertise. You can generally upload your own images and audio and pin them to a map relatively quickly. This often makes outdoor digital tours less resource-intensive than designing a new physical exhibit.

Q: What if our museum has a limited budget?

A: Many digital platforms offer scalable options that can be more cost-effective than building a custom app. Some providers offer entry-level models that allow you to test your ideas before making a larger commitment. Additionally, many tourism boards and cultural funding bodies offer grants specifically for digital initiatives.

Q: How do you measure the success of an outdoor tour?

A: Digital platforms provide analytics that show how visitors are interacting with your content. You can track specific metrics like tour completions and the number of views for individual points of interest. This data can be helpful when reporting to stakeholders or applying for future funding.

Commencez à bâtir votre expérience de visiteur en plein air

Your museum’s storytelling does not have to end at the exit sign. With a museum tour app, you can create story-rich experiences that connect visitors with the history and culture surrounding them. The next great exhibition may not be inside a room; it could be waiting to be discovered one stop at a time in your community.

Ready to see how these tools can work for your institution?

Book a demo today to explore how you can start building your own outdoor visitor experience.

About the author: Andrew Applebaum is a digital tourism expert at Driftscape who helps destinations, BIAs, museums, and tourism teams create self-guided visitor experiences rooted in local stories. He writes about practical ways to improve visitor engagement, support local businesses, and make tourism initiatives easier to launch and manage. View Andrew’s profile and connect on LinkedIn