Let’s be real—these days, it seems like every cultural tourism project has to slap on some digital gimmick just to stay relevant. Without one, it almost feels too awkward to even roll out. But we all know that most of these so-called “digital upgrades” are pretty shallow: projection mapping on a wall, or a QR code that plays a short video. It’s novel the first time, but the second time around, it just feels like clutter.

When we were gearing up for the 35th Qingdao International Beer Festival, we kept asking ourselves whether we could actually do something meaningful—something that turns your phone into a viewfinder that reveals digital content not just as an overlay, but as something physically anchored to Beer City’s actual spaces. So we partnered with Shandong Renjia Seeing Image Service Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Daydream Technology Co., Ltd. to build a 24/7 AR experience that is so intuitive that literally anyone can just pick it up and jump in.

First, how to get people on board?

The biggest letdown with many projects is that visitors show up and have no clue there’s even an AR feature—or even if they do, they can’t be bothered to give it a try. So we designed two ways to get involved: online and offline.

Online, we launched a 2K ultra-HD AR navigation guide featuring the festival’s beloved Hajiu Family. Hajiu, Hajiuma, and the rest aren’t just static overlays on your screen—they come to life as animated digital guides.

Even before you arrive at Beer City, you can interact with them on your phone. They’ll point you to the best spots and show times, building a sense of familiarity and subtly creating a digital welcome ritual. By the time visitors arrive and spot the QR codes on the ground in busy areas like Stars Avenue, they don’t think of them as ads; instead, it feels like the party is already underway, and this online-to-offline handoff is meant to turn passersby into participants, all without them even noticing.

Second, how to anchor digital content onto the buildings?

This is the part that really tests the technology, and also the most easily overlooked.

You’ve probably tried AR apps where the virtual objects drift and jitter—you move your hand a little, and they float off. It completely kills the magic. To make the digital content at Beer City feel truly rooted in the landmark structures, our team put in a ton of work.

We focused on a few key landmarks: the Cheers Sculpture, the Cup of Joy, and the Celebration Basket. Then we performed a full 3D scan of each one, which was like giving each building its own CT scan. We had to precisely record every angle, surface contour, and texture coordinate.

With this scan data, when the digital content appears on your phone, it aligns perfectly with the physical structure. As you walk around the Cup of Joy, the virtual effects adjust in real time. This sense of alignment is crucial; it makes visitors feel as if these digital elements aren’t just images on a screen, but are actually there, just invisible.

Third, how to tackle the daylight problem?

The biggest challenge for AR is shifting lighting conditions, especially when the environment transitions from sunlight to neon and spotlights at night.

With many past projects, everything performed well during daytime testing, but once the sun went down and the floodlights and neon signs lit up, the algorithms lost tracking and the AR content started jumping around. But at the Beer Festival, nighttime is when the real action happens. If the nighttime AR experience failed, half the project would be ruined.

To tackle this, we scanned the models once in bright daylight, and then again at night, after the neon and spotlights were fully on.

This provided the algorithm with two independent reference systems. Whether you’re in bright midday sun or amid flickering neon lights at midnight, the system can instantly recognize the scene. This round-the-clock approach means we can keep the AR content stable, even in low-light or complex nighttime lighting. In short, we wanted the festival’s magic to continue well past sunset and reach its peak at night.

Fourth, what digitalization really leaves behind for tourism?

After all that work, we weren’t just creating flashy effects for people to snap photos with. To us, the Beer City project represents a fundamental rethink of what digitalization in cultural tourism should actually do. It shouldn’t be just a surface-level add-on to the physical world. Instead, through this project, we’ve developed a clear framework: starting with planning, then redefining spaces through digital content, and finally ensuring the technology performs reliably in complex real-world settings.

We can use algorithms to plant seeds in the physical world so that the moment a visitor scans a QR code, they become co-creators of the experience. We put the power back in the visitor’s hands, transforming them from passive spectators into active participants—and that, ultimately, is what makes travel truly meaningful.