Digital Interpretation as a Visitor Management Strategy: The Case of Côa Valley Archeological Park and Museum

The context of the health emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic led museums to adopt visitor management measures and interpretation techniques, which would lead to a closer relationship with the public and encourage visits. The heritage interpretation is more than transmitting information, and it is an educational activity, which can contribute to improve the visitor’s experience and to the sustainable development of local territories. The development and growing use of information technologies and multimedia techniques has boosted the use of digital media as a way of interpreting heritage. These techniques are crucial tools for museum management. However, digital interpretation is more than just a selection of technologies. It requires an integrated interpretive framework. This paper intends to understand how digital interpretation may be implemented in the scope of archeological heritage. In order to achieve the research objectives, besides a brief literature review, the Côa Valley Archeological Park and Museum is analyzed as a case study. This attraction was selected since the Côa Valley Archeological Park is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is an open-air gallery of Paleolithic carvings, which was born from the strength and perseverance of civil society, revolting against the construction of the dam in the Baixo Côa, and which became the main theme of the Côa Museum. The case study was analyzed through observation and an interview carried out with the representative of the Archeological Park under analysis. It was found that hard and soft strategies are being adopted for visitor management, and that various kinds of digital interpretation techniques are used, allowing great interactivity with the visitor. However, after the diagnosis, suggestions for improvement were proposed at this level.