The major challenge is the rapid development of both technology and consumer expectations. To turn this challenge into an opportunity, the project team has developed inspiring, though practical solutions within the core team, however, as well for the benefit of other attractions outside of the project. To make the new gamified products better recognizable and marketable, the project team elaborated the emused.eu brand. The project consortium encourages other attractions to make use of the tools, the findings and the brand developed as part of ‘BalticMuseums: Love IT!’ – aiming at forming a sustainable cross-border network of tourist attractions and destinations for a continuous exchange on IT-enabled services and digital strategies. Attractions love IT and visitors love it!

In the course of the over 10-year cooperation, funds of around 3.9 million euros were raised for the consortium, all partly financed by the European Regional Development Fund within the Interreg South Baltic Programme,to which the teamowesgreat gratitude.

Baltic Museum 2.0 (2009-2012, Lead Partner: Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, Germany) – joined six institutions from four countries. Its major purpose was establishing a common web portal: amodern site that would enable tourists from Europe to discover affiliated institutions. An important element of the process was also turning attention to the youngest. A children’s zone with games, colouringpages and a knowledge area became an integral section of the portal. Joint investigations on implementing online ticketing services and options for electronic visitor guidance systems laid the ground for the second project, BalticMuseums2.0 PLUS.

BalticMuseums2.0 PLUS (2010-2015, Lead Partner: Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, Germany) – focused on implementing multimedia visitor guides. Ten additional associated partners joined the consortium. At that time, electronic visitor guides, so-called e-guides, were just beginning to get popular and the museums faced the common challenge of how the new opportunities could be used sustainably for their visitors. Jointly developing both the tools and the services for such e-guides allowed a more involving visitor experience in various languages at the partner museums. Sharing multimedia content was one of the elements of mutual support of the partners, backed by a common platform for sharing contents -Resource Space, which allows for free sharing of materials, photos, films for useby the partner institutions.

BalticMuseumsClusters (2015, Lead Partner: Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, Germany) – was a so-called seed money project of just a few partners, looking into the opportunities of future cooperation clusters for sustainable tourism using smart tools for cooperation and branding and thus laying the ground for future projects, such as the fourth project: BalticMuseums: Love IT!.

BalticMuseums: Love IT! (2017-2020, Lead Partner: University of Szczecin) – was focused on enabling tourist attractions to offer gamified eGuide apps under a common brand. University of Szczecin leaded the consortium for inventing applications for smartphone users, following the trends of „Bring your own device” and gamification. The products of the project provide touristic attractions both with a tried and tested software and a brand to set up their own to e-guide apps with mini-games. Visitors can thus playfully learn in museums with their own smartphones. It also helps museums provide extended digital services, both during the actual visit, but also from home. The latter proved especially valid in a crisis situation, such as Covid-19 crisis in 2020. The project products will be managed by a cross-border network of tourist facilities, that use this brand and exchange information on IT developments for tourist attractions on a permanent basis: emused.eu