Pladia launched to enhance visitor experience at cultural venues and events

Pladia, a world-first experience design software business, has been launched as a premium solution designed to serve the cultural tourism market, offering arts and culture venues and events a cost-effective product suite to enhance the visitor experience.

Pladia is a software suite designed to transform visitor experiences by seamlessly blending physical and digital spaces. Its innovative platform enables museums, galleries, events and festivals the ability to ensure they remain at the forefront of visitor engagement by building, guiding, managing and improving visitor experiences.

Developed by the team at Art Processors, Pladia operates independently as an all-inclusive subscription technology.

A culmination of 13 years of research and insights on how museum visitors and tourists choose to navigate their way through a cultural space, and seek out more information, Pladia originated from Mona Museum's guide ‘The O’.

When Mona's ‘The O’ was created, so too was the Art Processors team, which went on to give cultural spaces around the world full-service experience design (clients include the Sydney Opera House, Mona, The Getty, Bob Dylan Centre, The Museum of Contemporary Arts (MCA) Sydney and more).

Now, Art Processors has launched Pladia as a stand-alone business.

With tight arts and culture budgets in Australia and around the world, the Pladia software offers organisations a cost-effective way to have a stand-out visitor experience, allowing them to craft personalised experiences, reduce friction, and understand visitors better than ever before via a self-service platform.

Pladia is the software of choice for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) due to its extensive experience in the GLAM sector with Julia Prior, Head of Digital Media at MCA describing Pladia as being “a robust platform designed with accessibility in mind, and incredibly user-friendly.”

At a time when visitor expectations are evolving and the demand for digital integration is growing, Pladia’s mission is to “deliver unparalleled utility, empowering its community to craft creative and accessible visitor experiences that leave lasting impressions, cultivate valuable learnings, and ensure long-term success.”

Pladia offers cultural institutions a subscription-based, self-serve platform with two key products:

Pladia Empower: a transformative end-to-end product solution designed to simplify and enhance the visitor experience while providing useful visitor analytics and insights for venues. The visitor application, delivered through a Progressive Web App (PWA), is designed for rapid configuration, enabling visitors to easily access integrated wayfinding and configurable content on their own mobile devices. Additionally, the product offers powerful analytics and feedback tools, empowering institutions to shape both tactical actions and strategic goals effectively.

Event Sync: an innovative SaaS product designed to achieve perfect harmony between sight and sound through seamless AV synchronisation. After undergoing extensive refinement through award-winning collaborations with the Sydney Opera House, Bob Dylan Center, Pentridge Prison Tours, and leading event provider AGB Events, Event Sync delivers high-fidelity audio to visitors' headphones or personal speaker with seamless synchronisation to visuals on screens, projections, and public displays. Ideal use cases include drone light shows, laser shows, projection mapping, fireworks displays, and outdoor cinema events.

Launched yesterday in Australia and the US, helmed by Chief Executive Andi Mastrosavas (pictured above), Pladia has plans to scale globally with 33 staff operating out of Australia and the US. Its executive team is bolstered by Head of Technology Gabriel Iturbe, Head of Customer Experience Lindsey Green and Head of Product and Design Anna Nicholson.

Mastrosavas shared “we know that the moment that causes museum and institution visitors the most anxiety and least satisfaction is the entry experience. The moment after a visitor has paid admission and stepped inside an institution can be filled with fear of missing something important, not knowing where to find what they want to see, and not having access to key information. And offering a technology solution for these problems has long been a costly exercise for institutions with tight budgets.”

“Pladia is here to bridge the gap for organisations with limited budgets. It’s configurable, easy-to-use and reliable, and most importantly will help visitors find their way simply, from their own device.”

Julia Prior from MCA adds “people come to the MCA for all kinds of reasons and connect with the space and contemporary art in different ways. So for the next iteration of our mobile museum guide, we wanted a solution that would enhance our visitors' experience from entrance to exit, both inside the galleries and around the building. We also needed a platform that would support our team to quickly prepare, update, and preview content so that visitors always have access to the latest happenings at the Museum.

Pladia’s flagship products Empower and Event Sync are now available for all Australian and US customers through an annual subscription.

For more information or to request a demo, visit www.pladia.io