Silversea redesigns the cruise in the Galápagos on board the "Silver Origin" through an immersive travel experience that guides the passengers in a deep and emotional discovery.
Silversea redesigns the cruise in the Galápagos on board the "Silver Origin" through an immersive travel experience that guides the passengers in a deep and emotional discovery.
Travel & Tourism
2020
Silversea
Silversea asked Sketchin to shape the contents, interactions, and spatial attributes of the Basecamp, the most peculiar feature of the Silver Origin vessel. The Basecamp is an interactive space which offers a new exploration experience to both guests and guides aboard the most luxurious cruise ship of the fleet, exclusively designed for the Galápagos.
Passengers can live a brand new idea of cruise thanks to a hybrid experience that connects on-site expeditions with life aboard the ship. The Basecamp is designed to make guests play with stories of the islands, get insights about their animals and share memories from their adventures, while becoming familiar with the itinerary.
How can you make one of the most spectacular places on earth even more spectacular? We decided to develop our creative strategy around one single concept: “unveiling different perspectives”.
The song of a whale, the sound of an erupting volcano, the wings of a giant manta, the flight technique of an albatross: we wanted the guests to experience the most unusual and untouched aspects of the Galápagos, hear what they cannot hear, see things from unprecedented views.
A lasting impression through relevance and beauty
The orchestrated variety of technologies, images and sounds give life to an breathtaking immersive experience, making the cruise last a lifetime. Interactive videos, lectures and entertaining services such as photo contests blend seamlessly into the guests’ cruise experience, complementing it with fun moments.
Contents unique in the world
Exclusive contents allow guests to discover rich details of rare natural phenomena and give life to a huge, interactive documentary made by almost three hours of videos, elaborated with professional naturalists. Thanks to an exclusive permission from Galápagos National Park, we could shoot unique drone footage that is now available only onboard the ship.
A working tool for Silversea Guides
Guides are the real stars of the guests’ journey. The Basecamp provides them with interactive materials, immersive briefings and lectures to trigger a new type of conversation with guests, eventually offering them a more equipped stage where to shine from.
A replicable expression of the brand uniqueness
The Basecamp experience is made of a coherent system of graphic symbols, interaction patterns and service attitudes that convey the unique elegance of the Silversea brand. This makes it scalable and replicable aboard other Silversea vessels
Immersivity has represented our major challenge. It guided the choice of technologies and the design of contents, spaces, sounds and interactions.
The Basecamp combines a Totem screen with a 6X2m oversize Ledwall screen and connects them by means of seamless transitions. Highly technological solutions have been adopted to trigger unexpected sorts of gestures and behaviours.
Interactive curtains and bumper videos make the person feel the two elements as a unique device. It is quite unusual to see animals jumping out from one screen and coming back in the other.
Combining physical and digital, art and functionality, the Geowall is the final complementary piece of the Basecamp. It is a decorative element as well as a tool which helps both guests become familiar with the itinerary and the archipelago.
The choice of the materials followed an ethical and sustainable approach: Paperstone®, a luxury material created from recycled paper and non-petroleum resin; and Green Cast®, the world’s first and only 100% recycled cast acrylic sheet, with colors that perfectly recall the ship’s interior design.
The Geowall is based on retroilluminated 3D islands and engraved sea bathymetric lines.
The Basecamp is just one part of the project. We created not only a physical-technological space but a system of interactions, touchpoints and new experiences, also in other environments of the vessel. This established a dialogue between the ship and the islands.
We have defined an immersive briefing format to prepare passengers for the excursions and maximize their safety as well as new interactive lectures to be held in the Basecamp in 6x2m format.
The narrative and visual style embraced all the digital contents available on board, setting a new level of communication style. All contents have been designed to be perfectly contextual to each moment and visit of the travel plan.
When in Galapagos you take a good shot of a blue-footed boobie or of a whale jumping out of the water, the first thing you want to do is to show it to everyone. The Basecamp allows guests to upload, share and vote their best pictures.
The intensive field research made the difference
We searched for new technologies. We looked for inspiration in fairs and exhibitions. We flew to Galapagos and went aboard the cruise ship to observe people and hear their voices. We swam with guests, looked for animals and hiked on lava fields with guides.
Great stories come from great adventures. We have carried out activities across 6 countries (Italy, Ecuador, US, France, Germany and The Netherland), working from very unusual places such as hangars, ports, a ship under construction, volcanos, zodiacs and beaches.
We worked side by side with our client to co-create the main aspects of the experience. All contents have been envisioned and written together with Silversea naturalists and photographers. Once contents had been produced, artefacts crafted and software developed, we went to Rotterdam’s Port to install the Basecamp on the new ship.
The Basecamp is a complex object that does not work alone. Thus, we went back on board the Silver Origin to train the crew on how to use it and to understand together how to fully integrate it with the on-board operations.
Unexpectedly, we noticed that guests were rarely engaging the Basecamp alone, but once the experience was starting, retention was extremely high. People could stop browsing for +30 minutes. Contextuality was perfect. Yet, we had to figure out new experiences triggers to bring people in. A new round of experiments with the crew started, until the most effective setting was found.
The Basecamp is all about unveiling unique and different perspectives of one the most iconic places on Earth. It welcomes, informs and inspires the guests to interact, making their cruise journey in the Galàpagos unforgettable.
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