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Part of Southern Discoveries re entry back into the Queenstown market now includes wine tours, but one of their most innovative shifts in visitor experiences is the launch of a multi-lingual, GPS-enabled commentary app.
Where the hum of commentary systems can often drown out the natural beauty of a place, Southern Discoveries is turning down the volume — and turning up the connection.
Now spanning their coach, cruise, and flight experiences. It’s a move that chief executive Kerry Walker says has transformed how visitors engage with landscapes like Milford Sound.
“We were the first to launch that in multiple languages in 2023,” Kerry says. “We thought it was predominantly something that we would do on our coach produc, and the feedback from that was fantastic.”
Accessible as a self-guided audio tour, the app allows guests to hear stories in their own language, syncing with their location in real time.
“We wanted to make the experience more intimate and more relaxed and not so noise polluted. It’s just a calmer experience for our visitors,” she says. “And the feedback about hearing it in your own language brings the place alive for visitors. Some of our stories are quite quirky and some of them are more authentic and relate to Māori storytelling in the region or sort of the facts and figures. So there really is something in there for everyone.”
The app is now active across their full range of transport partners, including Air Milford and Glenorchy Air, and will soon be integrated into the popular Milford Track Freedom Walk combo, further blending physical exploration with digital narration.
“We definitely focus on the local storytelling… but we also put our own twist on it,” Kerry says. “There’s no point in quoting types of waterfalls without making it relevant and interesting to your customer. And we have the ability to do that because we are still a small-medium business. We’re on a size and scale that’s part of our DNA.”
For Southern Discoveries, this isn’t tech for tech’s sake. The commentary app plays a key role in delivering environmental education, which Kerry sees as crucial in places as fragile and iconic as Milford Sound.
“I think it’s a major part of our role in taking anyone into Milford Sound — education,” she says. “And I’m personally a firm believer that people don’t relate to the importance of our environment preservation without experiencing it and understanding what they can do to do that.”
That mission extends to partnerships, including their work with the Tāwiki Project, focused on penguin conservation in the region.
“But I think there is a story there around preservation and conservation in our space and how tech enables us to tell those stories,” she says. “I’m also a pretty firm believer that you can’t plant yourself out of a climate or an environmental sort of issue. You can’t plant enough trees to cover what we’re doing and the landscape as a human race.”
Instead, Southern Discoveries is doubling down on responsible tourism practices: fewer trips, lower fuel use, and smaller passenger loads to preserve the serenity and impact of each encounter.
“For our part, we try to reduce the number of trips, we reduce our fuel usage, we don’t load our boats fully up so that you can enjoy the area that you’re in and really see it for what it is — and therefore hopefully make a connection with it.” says Kerry.
