After years of stagnation the Slovak tourist industry is seeing a boom. The issue is that the vast majority of visitors don’t even consider visiting attractions that are below their feet. Despite many Slovak caves beeing listed in UNESCO’s World Heritage List, the visitor rate fell by staggering 50% since 2008. We came up with a solution how to virtually present Slovaks most trasured caves.

We offered tourists an unique and interactive experience to virtually visit the most beautiful Slovak caves. Underground periscopes are mobile and have been touring all over the country.

Periscopes consisted of a metal hardware chasis and a smartphone equipped with a gyroscope and an app that reacts to movement. The smartphone was loaded with 360° images in full HD quality. By turning the periscope person activated the smartphone inside and was able to look around different caves. One button on the periscope was for switching diffrent caves and the other was used to zoom in and out of the picture. Full HD quality photos which were shot exclusively for this project gave a person an illusion of „beeing there“.

The campaign is still running – in summer season the periscopes were placed outside and for winter they will be placed indoors (museums, shopping malls, hotel lobbys). The first result are very promising – Slovak Cave Administration noted a record visitor rate this year. The accural is 81 276 visitors comparing to year 2015 (divided between 12 caves).