Audio Guide Adventures at the MergelRijk Caves
Image copyright © Guide-ID
Challenge
Upgrade the visitor experience with an audio guide solution that is easy to use in daily operations and can perform reliably in a humid environment.
Solution
Guide-ID’s Podcatcher Pro, with its water-resistant casing, enables reliable operation inside the cave environment. Meanwhile, the Tour Editor platform helps the team manage, update, and continuously improve their content with multilingual narration and Text to speech AI narration.
Results
Higher visitor engagement, more immersive storytelling experience, easier day-to-day content management, and a wider range of language options for international visitors.
When people think about cave tours, they often imagine a dark underground space with a few information panels and maybe a guide explaining some history along the way.
But MergelRijk is not that kind of cave.
This is not a boring cave. This is a cool cave.
Located beneath Valkenburg, MergelRijk is an underground world filled with stories, sculptures, dinosaurs, cave paintings, and unexpected discoveries. Some of them started millions of years ago, when the marlstone that forms the caves was created.
Opened in 2014, MergelRijk was created by Peter Meurders and Aschwin Gulikers inside the centuries-old marlstone quarries of Valkenburg. These tunnels were formed through the extraction of marl, a soft limestone that originated around 70 to 66 million years ago. The site’s history began with mining operations in the Middle Ages, which gradually expanded into an extensive network of underground passages. Over the centuries, these caves were used for shelter during wartime, religious gatherings, mushroom cultivation, and artistic expression.
Today, MergelRijk preserves and shares this unique heritage through interactive exhibitions, storytelling, and hands-on experiences. Thousands of visitors visit MergelRijk every year to discover the fascinating history of the excavations, explore spectacular underground spaces, and experience attractions such as life-size sand and marl sculptures, DinoRijk, the dark quarry, Mosaquarium with its lifelike Mosasaurus, and the surprising 3D cave paintings hidden deep underground.
Always looking for the next opportunity
For MergelRijk, introducing a new audio guide wasn’t driven by a problem that needed solving. Aschwin Gulikers, Co-founder of MergelRijk shares:
“It wasn’t strictly necessary,” “We always want to stay ahead and seize new opportunities.”
Their goal was clear, to make the experience even better while keeping things easy to manage. The team was looking for a solution that would be simple to install, require minimal maintenance, and make it possible to offer high-quality narration in multiple languages without relying on external parties. And together with Guide-ID, they found exactly that.
Meet Jan, your guide
When visitors start their journey, they are welcomed by Jan, the attraction’s audio guide who walks with them through the caves at their own pace. Along the route, Jan shares stories about the origins of the caves, marl mining, the people who worked underground, and the many ways these tunnels have been used throughout history.
The audio guide allows every visitor to independently explore the attraction while discovering stories through a combination of narration, visuals, sculptures, and interactive exhibits. Offering a flexible visitor journey that lets everyone experience MergelRijk in their own way.
Reliable in the depths
Operating technology underground comes with its own challenges. The caves naturally have relatively high humidity levels, which can be demanding for electronic equipment.
But in this case, the Podcatcher Pro devices have proven to be highly reliable in this environment. For MergelRijk, this made reliable, water-resistant hardware an important part of the solution.
As Aschwin confirms:
“It is very resistant to it. The venue has relatively high humidity, but we haven’t had any problems with that yet”.
Another major advantage for the team is that content can be managed remotely. Through the Tour Editor platform, updates, adjustments, and new content can all be configured without complicated on-site maintenance, saving time and making day-to-day operations easier.
From four languages to twelve
One of the biggest improvements for the attraction has been accessibility. Before implementing the new solution, MergelRijk offered its visitor experience in four languages. Today, thanks to AI-generated voice narration, visitors can enjoy the full experience in twelve languages.
The ability to automatically generate high-quality multilingual narration has made it possible to welcome a much broader international audience while keeping content management entirely in-house.
Aschwin Gulikers shares:
“It is very easy and automatically narrated in multiple languages in good quality using AI. Together with Guide-id, we can do that ourselves and do not need any other external parties for it.”
Small changes with a big impact
Visitor satisfaction was already high before the audio guide was introduced. However, the team has noticed that visitors now seem even more enthusiastic.
Understanding how visitors consume content helped them learn one lesson, to keep the stories concise. That’s how MergelRijk maintains visitor attention, by making narration shorter, focused, and ensuring that key stories remain memorable.
Even though no formal measurements have been taken, the impact has been noticeable every day through smoother operations, easier content management, and positive visitor reactions.
The mix of technology and storytelling
For MergelRijk, adopting Guide-ID’s Podcatcher Pro was not driven by necessity but by a desire to continuously improve and innovate. Which lead them to elevate their visitor engagement and take the overall experience to a new level of satisfaction.
By combining technology with compelling storytelling, MergelRijk has strengthened its mission of bringing the extraordinary history of Valkenburg’s marlstone caves to life for visitors from around the world and remain as one of the most popular attractions in the region.
Feeling inspired by this project? Discover how Podcatcher Pro can bring multilingual storytelling to your venue while meeting the demands of your unique environment. Get in contact with us and let us discuss your needs and explore the possibilities.
Water-resistant audio guide system designed for underground environments
Enhanced visitor experience and higher satisfaction levels
Cost-effective text-to-speech audio creation without relying on external providers
