Even palace tours are hi- tech in Bangalore Bangalore

The scion of the Mysore royal family, Srikanta Datta Narasimharaja Wadiyar, has come up with an innovative plan to attract tourists to the Bangalore Palace — an audio- guided tour of the heritage site.

Wadiyar has partnered with a renowned tour operator for this facility.

Visitors will be provided with MP3 players. All they have to do is plug in the ear phones and select a language of their choice for the audio guide. The hour- long audio guide is available in Kannada, English, Hindi, French, Spanish, German and Italian.

The audio tour focuses on the history, art and architecture of the palace, which is a replica of the Windsor Castle in England.

The audio guide describes 21 different spots of the palace. “ We get millions of visitors every year. With the launch of these audio tour guides, site interpretation service will help them understand and appreciate the collections and history better. This will also be of importance to bridge the language barrier between the multilingual visitor and us,” said Wadiyar.

Of course, the service is available for a fee — Rs 175 for Indians and Rs 350 for foreign tourists. According to Wadiyar, the service has generated tremendous response among the visitors.

The scion now intends to introduce a similar service at some of the other heritage sites belonging to the Royal family of Mysore.