VoiceMap: Audio Tours & Guides

At the top of VoiceMap’s leaderboard, there’s a dizzyingly accomplished traveller who has done 178 tours in 20 countries and 77 destinations. She’s walked over 400km (250mi), covered almost 1,000km (600mi) by car, and spent a total of 250 hours – more than 10 days – doing VoiceMap tours. She’s not alone. The top 5% of our users do roughly 25% of our tours, with an average of 12 walks, drives, and museum guides per person, so far, in a cohort that has doubled in size since January this year. If you’re in this group, version 16 is for you – and we’d also love to interview you for our new series, How We Travel. So, what will you find in this update? • You can now mark tours as Completed, then filter them out of your library. • You can sort your library by when you added tours, with newest or oldest first, along with what’s nearby and a basic alphabetical sort. There’s a recently added view now too. • We’ve improved offline mode, with a simpler status across the app that celebrates time away from the screen. • Search is more useful in version 16, with a new look – and in addition to searching by tour, destination and publisher, you can now search by attraction and find all the tours linked to a specific landmark. There are 15 that traverse Florence’s Ponte Vecchio, for example. Our roadmap has all sorts of improvements for our most active users coming soon. Better ways to manage your library are only the first step, and if you’ve spent anywhere close to 250 hours doing our tours, we’d love to hear what would be most useful for you.

VoiceMap tours are like podcasts that move with you, to tell stories about what you’re seeing right now. They're produced by insightful local storytellers, including journalists, filmmakers, novelists, podcasters, and tour guides. Ian McKellen has even created a tour. So have the Daily Show and Sir Stephen Fry. Why use VoiceMap? • Explore at your own pace instead of being herded along in a group. Start and stop tours whenever you like, to grab a drink or take in the view, then tap Resume to pick up exactly where you left off. • Focus on your surroundings, not the screen. With automatic GPS playback, you can just tap on Start and let VoiceMap guide you. • Avoid expensive roaming fees or fiddly connection issues. After you download a tour, VoiceMap works offline and includes an offline map. • Enjoy tours as many times as you like, both in your destination and with your feet up, at home. Virtual Playback turns every tour into a podcast or audio book. • Extend your attention span with indoor tours that help you make the most of your time at a growing range of museums and art galleries around the world. • With over 2,100 free and paid tours in 80 countries, VoiceMap offers huge variety. There are over 100 tours in London alone! Press: “High-quality self-guided walking tours...Narrated by local experts, they provide insight into corners of the city sometimes overlooked by regular guided tours.” Lonely Planet “We may be biased, but could there be anything more helpful than having a journalist in your pocket when touring a new city? How about a historian, a novelist or just a really passionate local? VoiceMap culls city-specific stories from them all and fits them neatly into walking tours.” New York Times User Testimonials: "Perfect for solo travelling on your own schedule! Downloaded for a trip to Europe and will be continuing to use it on my next travels." App Store review, Vialetter “My wife and I really enjoyed exploring Bruges at our own pace with this audio tour, and there were some memorable stories that the narrator shared. Also, the app worked great in relation to the location-based services. We easily followed the map and the audio was triggered in the appropriate spots. In comparison to the packs of people wandering the city with tour guides, this was a much better fit for us.” Viator review, Rick A “Great quality information - interesting and entertaining. The time flew by. And no waffle! This is far better than any other guided tour we found - they are much more expensive and far less informative. And you can do this tour any time, any day, at your own pace, and even do it twice!” Tripadvisor review, Carcassonne 's Medieval Walls: A Self-Guided Tour "Thoroughly recommend. Really enjoyed the tour. Very well done. Packed with information and took me round streets I’d never have thought to walk round. An audio and visual treat. Thank you." Janet, NYC “It was enjoyable to be under no time pressure to freely roam the city of Pisa as we so pleased. Wandering from attraction to attraction. The app is clever, concise and easy to use! Would do again - especially with another person or solo traveler.” GetYourGuide review, Grace L “Great value for money, interesting and very clear and easy to follow! I learnt lots about London I didn't already know and I have lived here over 30 years.” London’s Alternative History Tour, Carmella V. ** Just so you know, GPS runs in the background while you're on a tour. This decreases battery life and it's best to start a tour with your device fully charged.