About

Epirus Magic County pc (EMC) is a recently established B2B e-services provider, addressing international outbound tour operators, as well as domestic travel agencies, hotels and other tourism services providers, that wish offering immersive experiential tourism services to their customers. EMC developed and operates the "Digitally Expanded Site Tour" integrated e-services platform, which is offered using the System-as-a-Service model, to both international and domestic providers of cultural heritage sites touring services

Solution & Product

EMC's DEST e-service platform, offers tourism service providers a state-of-the-art set of digital tools, along with a full range of multimedia datasets related to selected cultural heritage sites, enabling them to seamlessly incorporate mixed reality techniques and gamification models, in thematic site tours for a wide range of popular tourism destinations. For that, EMC equips each participant with a pair of smart glasses that communicate with the DEST central system, having the ability to locate the exact location, as well as the orientation of the bearer at any time. The DEST central system interoperates in real time with the DEST apps on the smart glasses, for displaying multimedia info (image, video, sound, narration) on the smart glasses, strictly related to the geolocation and the sight orientation of the user. The admin of the tour can also activate a preset gamification model that will run in parallel with the tour, using the same H/W and S/W infrastructure described above. The DEST e-services platform differs from any known, tourism destination related AR app, as it uniquely synchronizes the surrounding natural view with the selected multimedia content and visualizes their combination through a single device (the smart glasses), which is not feasible when the visitor uses any handheld device. At the same time it enhances the mobility and the concentration of the user, as he doesn't need to distracted by any portable device

Innovation & Scalability

EMC's DEST e-services platform launches an innovative model of cultural heritage sites touring, which dramatically enhances the attractiveness of the site and skyrockets the visitor's experience, by introducing state-of-the-art Mixed Reality and Gamification technologies that are implemented with the use of smart glasses, functioning in a fully wireless network environment. Thru smart glasses, the multimedia content (which is overlaid onto the real world) is dynamically linked to the geolocation and the sight orientation (field of view) of the user, as well as to critical triggers stored in the route timer. Furthermore, the technology of mobile location-based gaming introduced by DEST e-services platform, provides a new format of heritage experience by linking ordinary exhibition and interactive gameplay as a digression to the past Scalability of business Reasoning of a positive target market response: Lack of competition, Technology premium, A win-win proposal to target markets Expanding Target Market: Adding new entries in the DEST-enabled pool of destinations, expanding DEST to other experiential activities, Develop and launch a customizable “off-the-shelf” version DEST e-services platform, easily adjustable to the needs of Tourism Services Providers that offer cultural tourism services worldwide. Secondary market opportunity: Expanding DEST platform use, by extrapolating the Field of View of a person wandering inside a strictly defined geofence, beyond the visible horizon

Traction & achievements

EMC received a funding under the “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” NSFR Action, for financing the R&D activities and the launching of a Minimum Viable version of DEST e-services (MVS) EMC has signed a Programme Agreement for providing the DEST e-services platform to SUNS HOLIDAYS (SH.Li), an international outbound tour operator based in Liechtenstein. SH.Li is activated in central and northern Europe, offering organized experiential tourism activities for Mediterranean destinations mainly. The agreement provides for the creation and population of multimedia DBs for a number of destinations to be selected by SH.Li, which EMC will include in the group of DEST-enabled destinations and make the DEST services available to SH.Li customers in these sites, for the period May to September 2023. The contract is immediately activatable, subject to the SH.Li's approval of the "market entry" version of the DEST platform. The DEST project team designed and nearly completed the development of the MVS version of the DEST platform, that implements the core functionality of DEST e-services and will be tested in the legendary cultural heritage location of the Battle of Marathon. ART-TECH team is working on selecting validated and approved historical data, on designing cultural heritage site touring scripts and transforming them to DEST "mixed reality" environment and on the artistic curation of visualized historical events, projected during the cultural heritage sites tours

Team & Why Us

The key members of EMC team: - Alexandros Garyfallos, Director and majority stake owner. Alexandros holds a Degree in Mathematics and a M.Sc. in Operational Research. He has over 20 years of experience in the field of tourism e-services - Dr. Nikolaos Frydas, Senior Consultant to the EMC Management. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Coding and a M.Sc. in Telecoms. He has an outstanding experience in the innovative tourism e-services market - Dr. Erietta Deligiannis, Coordinator of the "ART-TECH" group. Erietta holds a Ph.D. with honors in Archeology and she is a Certified Guide licensee from the Athens School of Guides. Dr. Deligiannis has worked as an archaeologist, a tour guide (licensed for tours in English, French, German) as well as an educator (teaching ancient Greek history), while she was participating for more than ten years as a scientific partner, in various excavation research projects and publications - Antonis Garyfallos, Sales & Marketing manager. Antonis holds a Degree in Management and an M.Sc. in Operational Research and Management. He has eight years experience as commercial director, working for an e-services provider of an integrated, location-based, "proximity marketing" platform - Marco Rousso is to be appointed as Technical Director. He holds a Degree in Mathematics and an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering. Marco developed his skills and gained valuable experience in the field, working as project manager with "B2B Travel Portal" development teams

Funding Needs

Following a, hopefully successful, launch of the MVS version of the DEST e-services platform, EMC will need a total funding of 450,000€ (approx) to implement the following tasks as outlined in the company's business plan: - Procurement of additional research facilities (funding estimation: 86,400€) - Employing consultancy and knowledge transfer services in the field of "serious gaming" systems design & development, in a smart glasses environment (funding estimation: 74,700€) - Transforming the MVS version of DEST e-services platform into the "market entry" version of the service (funding estimation: 55,200€) - Run the pilot operation of the "market entry" version and make available it's "off-the-shelf" version (funding estimation: 116,800€) - Implementation of market launch activities of DEST e-services (funding estimation: 114,900€)