Listed below are answers to frequently asked questions about our SelfTour Audio Adventures. If your query is not listed below please view our How to Use page. If you are still not finding what you are looking for, feel free to Contact us.
Several reasons, but the most important one to the user is that our team comes out of show business and we use they skills in writing and production to make each of our tours entertaining. We build in a story of the location and use that to find ways to present the tour as a story experience. We also add music, effects to paint a picture in the user’s mind of the history or situation. And we make it fun.
Each tour is separated into a different app available to download on the App Store. Most apps (tours) can be purchased for $5.99 USD. This includes unlimited uses and supports family sharing.
We do it ourselves. Our team is dedicated to each tour project and we work together to research, write, select music and assemble each tour. We know we can do it better than just hiring a person who may not have had the travel experience or to understand what the listener wants.
SelfTour was established in 2008 to write and record audio tours for museums, corporate centers and other attractions. The company also licensed audio guide equipment to be used for tours. Typically these were a wand like device that the user would hold to their ear to hear the tour. These were incapable of doing what smartphones or tablets can do today. Additionally the audio product was inferior.
That varies with the location and the story we want to tell. We feel it is important for all of our tours to have a circle route, so you end up where you started. So that challenge is featuring what those going to the location typically want to see with a route that makes sense. While we try to find the most condensed route with the most important sites, sometimes the route may need to be longer. The value of our exclusive SelfTour program system is that it allows the user to stop and take a break, have lunch or even spread the tour visit over a couple days.
This is where our museum experience really pays off. We found that 70% of the people taking a tour what just the highlights. The remaining 30% really want every detail of what they are looking at. In the museum world the 30% rule, because one of the purposes of a museum is to teach. So we found that we would put the most important information about the subject first and then go into the more detailed information. This allowed the user to stop listening when they want. We also found that tourists are different. They are typically on tighter schedules and only want to hear the most interesting information, so that is where we put our attention.
When you first load a tour you will be promoted to allow GPS access. By allowing access the app will place your location on an overhead map. If you are not in the location of the tour (for example if you are previewing the tour content from your home before you visit), you may not see the tour route including the numbered icons of each tour stop. If this is the case you will need to zoom out or use the hamburger menu in the top left to access the tour locations.
You can reset this choice by going to Settings on your iPhone, scrolling down to the app and choosing “Never” on the “Allow Location Access” option. From here if you force close and reopen the app you will be directed to our suggested starting place (stop 1) and be re-prompted to allow GPS access.
In some rare cases the tour will play without audio. If you find yourself with this situation you should try toggling your mute sound button on / off. If this doesn’t work then you should try deleting the app, restarting your phone and then re-downloading the app.