How Dawson City Built a Visitor Experience Its Team Could Maintain
July 29, 2025
A Standalone App That Was Too Difficult to Maintain
Dawson City originally set out to create a digital audio guide for its historic buildings and sites. The project began during the COVID-19 period as part of an effort to support winter tourism and give visitors another way to explore the community.
The storytelling foundation was already in place. Dawson City had identified approximately 49 potential historic sites and prepared much of the supporting photography and audio. Recorded by local voices, the short, conversational stories explained what buildings had once been, how they had changed and why they mattered to the community.
The challenge was finding a sustainable way to deliver that content.
Dawson City initially planned to build a standalone app. Even small changes, like correcting historical information or updating a photograph, would have required outside technical support adding cost and slowing down routine work.
For a small destination team, the long-term responsibility of maintaining custom technology became difficult to justify. Dawson City needed a platform staff could manage internally, without relying on a developer or consultant whenever something changed.
A Self-Managed Platform for Dawson City’s Historic Audio Stories
Dawson City moved its audio guide to Driftscape, giving the destination team direct control over its content without the technical burden of maintaining a standalone app.
The public experience launched with 45 active historic locations. Each stop combines written interpretation, photographs and locally recorded audio to share the story behind the place. Explore the audio guide.
Rather than following a fixed route, visitors can explore well-known attractions such as Diamond Tooth Gerties, the Palace Grand Theatre and Midnight Dome, along with cabins, churches, former businesses, cultural sites and historic residences.
Each location works as a self-contained experience. A visitor can listen to one story while passing a building or spend an afternoon exploring several stops across the community.
A Standalone App That Was Too Difficult to Maintain
Dawson City originally set out to create a digital audio guide for its historic buildings and sites. The project began during the COVID-19 period as part of an effort to support winter tourism and give visitors another way to explore the community.
The storytelling foundation was already in place. Dawson City had identified approximately 49 potential historic sites and prepared much of the supporting photography and audio. Recorded by local voices, the short, conversational stories explained what buildings had once been, how they had changed and why they mattered to the community.
The challenge was finding a sustainable way to deliver that content.
Dawson City initially planned to build a standalone app. Even small changes, like correcting historical information or updating a photograph, would have required outside technical support adding cost and slowing down routine work.
For a small destination team, the long-term responsibility of maintaining custom technology became difficult to justify. Dawson City needed a platform staff could manage internally, without relying on a developer or consultant whenever something changed.
A Self-Managed Platform for Dawson City’s Historic Audio Stories
Dawson City moved its audio guide to Driftscape, giving the destination team direct control over its content without the technical burden of maintaining a standalone app.
The public experience launched with 45 active historic locations. Each stop combines written interpretation, photographs and locally recorded audio to share the story behind the place. Explore the audio guide.
Rather than following a fixed route, visitors can explore well-known attractions such as Diamond Tooth Gerties, the Palace Grand Theatre and Midnight Dome, along with cabins, churches, former businesses, cultural sites and historic residences.
Each location works as a self-contained experience. A visitor can listen to one story while passing a building or spend an afternoon exploring several stops across the community.
Giving Dawson City Full Control Over Its Content
Driftscape gave Dawson City a content management system the tourism team could update independently.
Staff can log in to edit text, replace photographs, upload audio or correct information without asking a developer or consultant to make the change. This gives the team greater control over accuracy, timing and ongoing maintenance.
The platform’s point-of-interest structure was a natural fit for the material Dawson City had already created. Each historic location could hold photographs, detailed interpretation and audio in one place, without forcing every story into the same length or route.
Visitors can access the guide through a web-based map or the Driftscape mobile app. Deep links and QR codes can send people to the full guide or a specific location, making it easier to begin exploring.
Offline access is especially useful in a remote destination. Visitors can download content in advance and continue using the guide where cellular service may be limited.
Driftscape also provided onboarding, pre-launch content review and post-launch support, helping Dawson City move from a difficult standalone-app plan to a visitor experience its own team could maintain.
Usage More Than Doubled During the Guide’s First Full Month
Dawson City launched the audio guide in late May 2026 with 45 active points of interest.
The guide generated approximately 650 place views during its partial launch month. In June, its first full month of availability, that figure grew to more than 1,600 views.
By July 15, 2026, Dawson City’s historic content had generated more than 2,600 place views across the guide.
The Visitor Information Centre received the most views. Visitors also opened stories connected to Diamond Tooth Gerties, Midnight Dome, the Paddlewheel Graveyard, Tr’ochëk and a range of heritage buildings and cultural sites across the community.
Beyond visitor engagement, Dawson City also eliminated an ongoing operational challenge. Staff can now maintain and expand the guide internally without relying on an external developer for routine updates..
Dawson City also gained an operational benefit that visitor metrics do not capture: staff can now maintain the guide directly without returning to an external developer whenever content changes.
A Platform That Matched the Content and the Team
Dawson City did not need to restart its audio-guide project. It needed a delivery platform that matched the content already created and the capacity of the team responsible for maintaining it. Explore Audio Tours.
Driftscape gave each photograph, written description and audio recording a clear home. Short introductions could sit alongside more detailed stories without forcing every location into a uniform format or fixed sequence.
The experience also reflects how visitors naturally move through Dawson City. Someone can listen to one recording while passing a heritage building, follow several stops during a walk or return to the guide over multiple days.
Dawson City can continue adding stories, replacing media and refining its interpretation without rebuilding the experience.
The existing historic locations could also support future formats such as themed routes, quizzes or a scavenger hunt based on what visitors learn at each stop.
The fit was practical on both sides. Dawson City had strong local content, while Driftscape provided a manageable way to publish, maintain and expand it.
“After this project sat on the back burner for five years, Driftscape helped us launch our audio guide in just a few weeks. Tourists and locals are using it, and even longtime residents are discovering things they never knew about Dawson City.” — Andy Cunningham, Marketing Manager, Dawson City
The Best Platform Is One a Destination Can Maintain
Many destinations begin by asking what kind of app they should build. Dawson City demonstrates that a more important question is who will maintain it over time.
By choosing a platform their own team could manage, Dawson City created a 45-stop audio experience with nearly two hours of local storytelling, available across web and mobile, without taking on the ongoing costs and complexity of custom app development.
For tourism teams considering a custom app, Dawson City offers a practical lesson: content ownership, ease of maintenance and internal capacity should be treated as core project requirements from the beginning.
Turn Your Historic Sites Into a Self-Guided Audio Experience
See how your destination’s stories, photographs and landmarks could work together in an audio guide your team can manage.
Talk to us about creating a self-guided audio experience with Driftscape. Book a demo