Personal guide on every phone - How to provide self-guided tours for visitors easily

Travel has significantly evolved, with self-guided tours becoming a popular choice for modern explorers. This shift, influenced by dynamic visitor preferences and events like the pandemic, has increased the demand for flexible, independent tourism. To cover that, digital travel guide platforms, such as SmartGuide, offer a fast track to creating engaging and informative audio guides for independent travelers. Thanks to this, destination management organizations (DMOs), tourist attractions, tour operators, and travel businesses can publish and even sell their digital guides and self-guided tours to their visitors. 

A visitor on a self-guided tour of a city checking SmartGuide digital tour guide app on his phone

Read more to explore how SmartGuide’s audio guides benefit visitors, and how SmartGuide platform provides the easiest way to publish self-guided tours.

SmartGuide - A digital companion for modern travelers

Established to aid the travel industry and independent travelers, SmartGuide serves as a hub for digital audio guides, much like YouTube acts as a platform for videos. For visitors seeking inspiration, it's a goldmine of places waiting to be discovered.

• SmartGuide digital audio guide provides over 6,000 self-guided audio tours for more than 1,000 destinations.
• It allows for exploration without internet access with offline maps and GPS navigation.
• Thanks to precise geolocation and set trigger zones, SmartGuide alerts travelers to nearby points of interest, automatically starting the audio for engaging stories and more insight. This ensures no interesting site is overlooked.
• SmartGuide incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) to enhance visitor exposure. The AI-powered personalized notifications provide to visitors with tips based on their interests, while AR brings destinations to life for more interaction.
• The user-friendly interface of the SmartGuide app ensures it is easily accessible to people of all ages.
• Available to download for free from Google Play or App Store.

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How to join SmartGuide and publish a digital guide

The process of how audio tour guides are created and published has been simplified by SmartGuide for content creators such as tourist destinations, attractions, tour operators, and tourism businesses. This tour guide system also eliminates the need for IT development and maintenance.

Here's how to create a guide using the SmartGuide content management system (CMS):

1. Visit cms.smart-guide.org and register an account.

2. Search for and open the desired destination.

3. Create new points of interest on the map, describing them as if guiding a friend. This is where local knowledge shines.

4. Enhance the visitor's experience by adding images, audio, video, or an AR model to the point of interest.

5. Organize the content into tours, providing a logical flow for visitors.

6. Promote yourself as the guide author with a profile and a link to your website in SmartGuide on every piece of content provided.

7. If desired, earn extra revenue by selling the content.

8. Make easy content updates whenever something changes. This flexibility is a significant advantage over printed guides, which can't be updated once published.

With SmartGuide's tour guide solution, creating a self-guided tour is a straightforward way to share local expertise with visitors from around the world. The entire process, from signing up to having a professional guide ready, can be completed in just a few hours (OG content authors can make it even in as little as one hour).

The SmartGuide team is also available to help with professional content preparation. However, content creators have the freedom to do it all independently and entirely free of charge.

It's super easy to join SmartGuide and publish a digital guide

Text-to-speech capabilities - improving interaction through AI technology

SmartGuide, standing as the world's #1 digital audio guide platform, offers three distinct options for audio tracks in the digital guides. The first is Text-to-Speech (TTS) audio, which automatically converts written text into spoken words for easy updates. The second option is TTS with phonemes, which improves the pronunciation of foreign names and acronyms. For emotional depth, there's the third option of Human audio, with professional voice actors. Content creators can also upload personal audio files or have the SmartGuide team create professional recordings.

Here are the pros and cons of each option:

• TTS offers benefits like accessibility, cost-effectiveness, natural-sounding artificial voices, the possibility of fast changes in content, and personalization with different languages. However, the speech can sound monotonous, struggle with pronunciation of specific expressions (esp. names), and have issues with abbreviations.
• TTS with phonemes improves pronunciation accuracy over basic TTS audio, caters to different languages and accents, and is continuously evolving, but it struggles with emotional conveyance and there is no guarantee of accurate pronunciation in all world languages. Additionally, it incurs extra costs.
• Human audio provides a personal touch, accurate pronunciations, and diverse voices, but its production is time-consuming and costly, and updates after publishing can be impractical.

SmartGuide serves as a one-stop digital guide solution

Seamless app maintenance and effective marketing strategies are vital for success in the digital era. Here's how SmartGuide excels in offering strong maintenance support and effective marketing tools, all while being a cost-effective solution.

The platform utilizes reliable cloud-based technology for secure data storage on Microsoft Azure with a 99.99% uptime guarantee. This enables fast global availability through the Content Delivery Network and unlimited scalability. 

SmartGuide handles the automatic updates that align with the latest Android and iOS changes. Unlike custom apps that are costly to maintain, SmartGuide offers full app maintenance by default. It also ensures 5+ years of sustainability for public funding and even manages end-user support.

The SmartGuide digital audio guide platform provides extensive marketing support. Content creators receive a dedicated deep link and QR code, which directly opens their content across all devices. The marketing welcome package for content authors includes a website integration widget, marketing poster and sticker designs, web banners, and global platform visibility. These features aim to enhance visitors' reach and engagement.

In the case of the SmartGuide platform, the value received outweighs the investment, eliminating concerns about maintenance or marketing support. The good news is that despite a €0.5M investment in developing this technology, SmartGuide offers its basic version for free.

How to sell your guides with SmartGuide

Navigating the digital guide marketplace and monetizing the created digital guides can be achieved through two distinct pathways: direct selling and in-app selling. Each possesses unique advantages, and here's how they work.

Direct selling involves offering the guide as an additional item for sale on various e-shops, ticket offices, and other channels. Content remains hidden, unlike the public content visible in SmartGuide, until a purchase is made. Visitors pay the full price for the content directly in cash or on the tourist destinations, attractions, tour operators, or tourism businesses' websites, and receive an activation QR code or link to unlock the hidden guide in the app. SmartGuide analytics tracks all purchases, generating an invoice at the end of the month. This method yields higher conversion rates compared to in-app purchases, without commissions to Apple or Google.

In the SmartGuide app, the guide preview shows the tour introduction and the first three Places of Interest, as long as the content is not provided for free by the content authors who published it on the SmartGuide platform. The remaining content is locked, which is indicated by a lock symbol. Guides can be purchased as in-app purchases, unlocking all guide content. The app store charges a commission of 15-30% from the sale. Purchases are tracked by SmartGuide analytics. At the end of the month, the agreed revenue share per guide is kept by SmartGuide, and the rest is credited to the respective content authors. No contract is needed for in-app sales alone, as the agreed Terms and Conditions govern relations.

For both direct and combined sales, a signed agreement with SmartGuide is required. Monthly billing is conducted for direct and in-app sales, reconciling the difference and either crediting or invoicing the remaining amount.

SmartGuide audio guide system offers a flexible and efficient way to sell guides, catering to diverse business needs and models. PRIVATE content is exclusively sold DIRECTLY, maintaining its exclusivity. Meanwhile, PAID content can be sold either DIRECTLY or IN-APP, providing a wider reach.

The ultimate way to monetize digital guide content

SmartGuide offers immense profitability potential. It operates on a fair and rewarding revenue share model, with no upfront fees or hidden costs. The model is simple: guide owners receive 70% of the net amount, while SmartGuide retains 30%. This allows guide owners to start earning with minimal effort and the more guides they sell, the higher their earnings. 

The minimum requirements are a €0.50 revenue share for each visitor who buys a guide per destination, and a minimum payment of €180, which covers the first 360 visitors (who purchase guides).

To make this partnership profitable, guide owners only need to sell guides for more than €6 a day - an easily achievable target.

Revenues can be tracked transparently in the billing section under the guide owner's account, with monthly payments processed once the share exceeds 100 EUR.

For those expecting fewer visitors initially, there is an option to start with the standard revenue share of 70/30%, allowing for flexibility as the business grows. Thus, partnering with SmartGuide provides an excellent way to maximize earning potential with minimal risk.

Why do top partners choose SmartGuide?

SmartGuide is a preferred choice for destinations, tourist attractions, and travel businesses that have found massive value in digitizing their guides. Here's what some of them have to say about this leading digital travel guide platform:

1. Barbora Tinterova, City Tourism Bureau, Mariánské Lázně: "We first digitized the guide to our city on the SmartGuide platform in 2017 and we immediately won first place in the Golden Coat of Arms competition, which recognizes innovations in tourism. Since then, the application has improved even further and everything works perfectly."

2. Stephan Duempelfeld, Deutsche Bahn Mitte: “We have been looking for a truly innovative solution that can these days attract locals and tourists back onto green trains from cars and buses, show them how interesting our regions are and extend our exposure to the customers with an up/cross-sell potential beyond our trains – SmartGuide.”

3. Helena Gottwaldová, Sternberk Castle Manager: "We use the SmartGuide application for foreign language visitors. This solves the problem of the lack of foreign language live guides. We chose SmartGuide instead of paper and traditional audio guides because the application is much more attractive to visitors. We were positively surprised by the results that during the first season, users of the application consumed an average of an incredible 80% of all content."

4. Tomáš Rieger, General Manager of the Terezín Memorial: “After three years of using the SmartGuide guide application, we have newly expanded the content in cooperation with the city of Terezín. For the new season, we will have one official application for visitors to the Memorial and the city of Terezín."

5. Peter Soukup, Head of Digital, Prague City Tourism: "We are already excited about enhancing our two walking tour brochures into 10 multimedia guides in less than a month. We could not believe that SmartGuide motivated 30% of tourists to explore beyond the over-crowded Royal route."

These testimonials showcase the real-world impact of SmartGuide. The digitization ease, attractive presentation, solution to language barriers, and ability to motivate tourists to explore hidden gems are key reasons why top partners choose SmartGuide. Their experiences exemplify the significant benefits and potential that SmartGuide offers.

Conclusion

SmartGuide's digital travel guide platform has become an integral part of the travel industry. Visitors benefit from detailed information, interactive maps, and rich multimedia content. The self-guided tours allow for a personalized journey at the visitor's own pace. Furthermore, tourist destinations, attractions, tour operators, and travel businesses can easily digitize their content, making it globally accessible without marketing and app maintenance challenges. With selling guide options, they can earn revenue and boost tourism in the best possible manner.

Join the 1,000+ destinations already on SmartGuide and be part of the future of travel. Don't miss out on the exciting opportunity to put yourself on the map of 1,000,000 modern travelers. Find out how!