The Story of SelfTour™

Having traveled to about 100 countries for work and pleasure my wife often accompanied me.  On these trips we always wanted to find out more about these new places, so we would sign up for available tours of the city’s highlights either by bus or walking.  While there have been some exceptions, on most we found the following problems:

• You must be on the Tour Director’s schedule, not your own.
• Often it is hard to understand the Tour Director, or TD, because of language difference or an accent.
• Most often you are with a large group and unless you stood close to the TD you cannot hear what is being said.  This problem is augmented by traffic noise and other conditions of the environment you happen to be in.
• You can’t stop for a beer or anything to drink along the way no matter how thirsty you may be.
• All too often, the TD’s presentation is boring – and more importantly they really don’t know what they are talking about. I often know more about the things we are looking at then they do, because I did my research before the trip.
• The TD always takes you to their friend’s souvenir shop in the middle of the tour to buy something that they get a kickback on. And even though you don’t want to buy anything, you must wait to hear the rest of the tour.   Wait until a couple old ladies finally decide on a handful of cheap souvenirs.
• Their walking tours are in one direction, leaving you someplace in the city other than where you started. So finding your way back to your hotel is a challenge.

Being a showman and writer I wanted to do a better type of tour.  In the industry I work, the Themed Entertainment industry, which includes theme parks and casinos, we are always concerned about what we call the “guest experience,” or how do we make our project more enjoyable for those visiting? A great guest experience always determines results in wonderful memories.  So there was my challenge.

Now along come smartphones.  Ideal for creating apps that can be tours.  So I combined this technology  with our storytelling skills, show production capabilities and the use of the GPS system for knowing ones location.  A winning combination that realized itself in SelfTour™ Audio Adventures.

After two years of technical development my team came up with a unique and wonderful system to achieve our goals.  Each of our tours is first extensively researched.  Then we record not one or two professional voice actors, but 3 or 4 to vocally bring alive key characters of the area.  To these voices we mix in excellent appropriate music plus sound effects to make the audio fun to listen to.

This makes the listening experience very immersive as you stand in the real atmosphere of the location.  We also have photos of every location on the tour so that the user knows they are look at what is being described.

And we made it very easy to use.  No internet is required.  You can stop anytime and pickup later.  With turn-by-turn voiced directions plus GPS you can’t get lost.  Every tour is a complete circle, You can start anywhere and always end where you started.

My final goal was to make the tour affordable so that everyone could use them to make their travel experience wonderful.

My production team and I hope you find your SelfTour™ experience wonderful and we look forward to hearing from you!

 

Ron Miziker is a Travel Expert and Developer of the SelfTour™ GPS guided walking and driving tour Apps.  Read more of his articles in our News Section.  To contact Ron, be sure to send us a message on our Contact page.