Exploring the solutions for self-guided tours: A comparison between SmartGuide and STQRY

Today's travelers seek authenticity, engagement, and convenience. The time of static brochures is over – the future of destination marketing is now centered around dynamic multimedia experiences. This is where travel guide apps come into play, allowing destinations, attractions, and travel businesses to connect with travelers directly on their mobile devices. However, with many available options, where should you publish your destination's guide and narrative?

Boosting the effectiveness of digital audio guides with SmartGuide

SmartGuide is the world's # 1 digital audio guide platform that provides a comprehensive solution for destinations, tourist attractions, and tour guides to create their digital audio guide. It currently offers self-guided tours in more than 1400 destinations, with content generally visible to the public (and mostly for free, with premium tours available for a EUR 9,90 annual subscription).

SmartGuide's content management system (CMS) enables content creators to effortlessly craft their guides in just a few hours, and provide a visitor experience that engages specific target audiences. The CMS includes a remarkable automatic text-to-speech feature, instantly converting written content to engaging audio tracks. Moreover, with the integrated DeepL translator, content can be seamlessly translated into 30 languages with just a single click. 

SmartGuide's content management system

Besides audio and video content, SmartGuide also supports augmented reality tour experiences and allows content creators to add AR models to their tours. Even if there is no sophisticated AR model available for a point of interest, e.g. historic photography blended into the present thanks to AR can do wonders in increasing visitor engagement with your guide content

SmartGuide also offers big data dashboards and GPS heatmaps of visitors' behavior and demography based on GDPR-compatible and GPS-based data, and an expert data analysis service, which greatly aids destination management and marketing. This digital audio guide platform also provides full app maintenance and automatic updates to keep the app up to date with the latest Android and iOS changes.

In addition, a SmartGuide-trained AI model now also provides personalized recommendations for visitors to the app. This approach effectively creates a truly personalized guide on every traveler's phone and helps in evenly spreading tourists from the overcrowded tourist hotspots. It utilizes neural networks to categorize activities and places of interest and match them to individual traveler preferences and past engagement based on unique personal profiles.

SmartGuide also supports city and regional tourist cards.

                                    SmartGuide's AI-powered personalized recommendations

SmartGuide's remarkable achievements and industry recognition

SmartGuide has garnered significant acclaim, being honored in over 20 prestigious international competitions and earning numerous awards. Additionally, SmartGuide's exemplary response to the pandemic led to the receipt of the European Commission Seal of Excellence.

The platform's excellence was further validated when it won the esteemed Hero of Tourism 2022 award, an accolade bestowed by both industry experts and the general public. It also received special recognition from the Minister of Regional Development and was granted the Czech Tourism Director's Award in the Digitalization category.

SmartGuide also secured a remarkable €1 Million grant to develop an Artificial Intelligence system to provide personalized travel recommendations based on individual interests and support Augmented Reality experiences. Furthermore, it has been recommended for funding by the European Commission and approved as a preferred digital travel services provider under the DigiTour project funding initiative.

SmartGuide's standing as a pioneering tourism innovator was acknowledged by being invited to present at the European Tourism Forum 2022, European Tourism Day 2023, or Tourism Innovation Summit 2024, where the company shared its best practices with EU tourism policymakers.

A testament to its success, SmartGuide boasts an impressive clientele and partners, including renowned organizations such as Switzerland Tourism, Salzburgerland, Jungfraujoch, Czech Tourism, Prague City Tourism, Bratislava Tourism Board, Carlsbad, Singapore National Heritage Board, Harvard Business School, Dubai Tourism, Vyšehrad, Terezin Memorial, Pilsner Urquell, RegioJet, Thames River Sightseeing, Deutsche Bundesbahn, and many others.

Pros:

1. No additional maintenance costs for destinations and travel businesses operating digital guides.
2. SmartGuide offers coverage for 100,000+ tourist places globally.
3. Guides can be auto-translated into 30 languages.
4. Free CMS with AI-powered text-to-speech and auto-translation for easy content localization.
5. Accurate insights through big data dashboards and GPS heatmaps of visitor behavior with precision down to meters.
6. Expert analysis of data to understand visitor demographics, acquisition channels, and popular tours/places.
7. Destination marketing services and expert consultations are available.
8. Easy creation of indoor and outdoor tours and activation of content via GPS, QR codes, NFC tags, Bluetooth beacons, etc.
   
9. SmartGuide-trained AI model provides personalized recommendations, improving visitors' travel experiences.
10. The SmartGuide platform provides Augmented Reality (AR) features that enhance the journey with an engaging layer of immersion.
    
    

Cons:

1. While it currently supports certain integrations such as GetYourGuide ticket sales, the number of integrations is on the lower side. However, more are being implemented to enhance functionality.
2. The spread of content geographically is largely dependent on the preferences of the individual content creators, given that it's an open platform where anyone can create a digital travel guide.
3. The app is not available on the Windows Phone Store.
   

SmartGuide app - country guide preview (Switzerland)

Unlocking the personalized exploration with STQRY 

With STQRY, formerly known as OnCell, destinations, and attractions can utilize a variety of features to create location-based tours, virtual tours, mobile and web applications, audio guides, interactive games, and digital collections. It provides the following tools:

STQRY Apps: This STQRY product enables organizations to develop their own branded mobile tour guide applications and web app stories. Users can effortlessly incorporate images, audio, text, map information, and custom features through an intuitive web-based tour builder.

STQRY Guide: Serving as a portal app, it allows visitors to explore engaging activities in a particular region. It facilitates the creation of audio guides, as well as guided and self-guided tours, quickly and easily using the STQRY Builder. Content creators can use the Builder to automatically translate text into 27 languages, expanding their content’s reach to a worldwide audience. Additionally, this tool supports AI-powered text-to-speech capabilities.

STQRY Analytics: The dashboard offers a clear view of a project's performance, delivering valuable insights into the audience. It aids in refining content strategy based on the collected data.

STQRY Fleet: This tool combines on-site hardware with its platform to download content to shared devices. It provides visitors with virtual tour guides running on the hardware.

Source: https://stqry.com/

With additional services like STQRY Kiosk or Collect, STQRY offers an extensive suite of products designed to assist organizations in developing user-friendly mobile guide and tour apps, educating visitors on-site, and sharing their narratives with a global audience.

STQRY recognition

The Brattleboro Words Trail, a collaborative research project using STQRY's technology, was recognized as a winner of the 77th annual Leadership in History Awards from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH). The award acknowledges the "creative, dedicated, and tenacious spirit of the team" behind the project.

Pros:

1. Content creators can launch a native app in the iOS and Android stores with STQRY Apps
2. STQRY supports integration with Google Analytics too, enabling content creators to track visitors' behavior.
   
3. STQRY Apps, the app builder for creating guided or self-guided tours and audio guides, offers geo-fenced alerts that are great for tours covering a wide area, and iBeacons can trigger audio or location-specific content when visitors approach.
   

Cons:

1. The app is available on the App Store and requires iOS 12.0 or later for iPhone, iPadOS 12.0 or later for iPad, and iOS 12.0 or later for iPod touch.
2. While the platform enables the creation of mobile apps without needing special hardware, destinations might need to invest in equipment such as audio gear, testing devices, and promotional materials like handouts or signage with QR codes for app downloads.
3. The app is not offered on the Windows Phone Store.
4. The app does not include a feature for personalized recommendations based on visitor interests.

                                                                                                   Source: https://stqry.com/

Conclusion

SmartGuide and STQRY are both excellent options for tourism entities offering tours and experiences to visitors. Both allow destination management organizations, tourist attractions, tour operators, and travel businesses, to augment their tours and audio guides into engaging mobile encounters. However, SmartGuide offers an affordable and flexible pricing model combined with a great user experience and AI-powered features. STQRY, on the other hand, is a broader solution suited for destinations and travel businesses that want to integrate interactive elements and create more complex collective apps for discovering local attractions.

Both solutions have their pros and cons, but depending on an organization’s specific needs either one could be the right choice.

Are you ready to turn every phone into a personal audio guide?