How to create an audio tour

More than ever, now,  what we look for is rich travel experiences. Imagine offering visitors from all across the world the big opportunity to hop on to their own self-guided tours anytime during the day. No hassle to bear with an expensive and rude tour guide, or lugging around a host of travel maps, guides, and brochures, or sitting in that oh-so-cramped bus tour, as now the travelers can treat themselves to an extravagant, cheaper, and way more convenient alternative.

A tour guide software can add to the luxury of your travel experience. The software development firms around the globe are helping travel and tourism service providers to bring in the picture the mobile applications and software that fulfill the needs of the customers in a go.
The experts share here how to develop an audio tour guide app like audio compass.

Create your own Audio Guide Mobile App

If you own a tour and travel business and want to take it to the digital frame, the right way is to create your own audio tour app and give your travelers a little treat. The app can be made available to both iOS, Android, and HTML5 visitors, who can download it as and when required.

As a business owner, you can offer your users audio tours free of charge or may charge a certain amount as a fee. Most visitors will love to download the audio tour app owing to the freedom & flexibility it offers. Let the users be taken behind the scenes, with the help of your audio tour guide app, and be enlightened with many interesting local facts and history related to a place or site.
Hence, they can bid adieu to expensive tours, early morning tours, or traveling with a bunch of tourists.

What is the Audio Guide App?

An audio tour guide mobile app is designed to let tourists enjoy their tour well!

Well, when you reach a mobile app development company for tour guide app development include features like let them be their own guide and explore things that are most interesting and exciting for them, as slow as they want, and not as per the time schedule of tour guides. The app can be used as a channel to collect information about interesting sites and places. Meanwhile, the app can be developed for locations where tour sites have already been defined.

Tourists are led by GPS to various points across a chosen site, and as they reach those points, they will be able to listen to the audio narration associated with that spot on your tour. The GPS audio tour app is of great utility these days! Every place has a story to tell, be it historic location, cultural site, natural or scenic locations, and with a location-aware app.

What are the benefits of the Audio Guide App?

In this blog, our experts will help you how to build a tour guide app that will take you through many aspects of audio guide apps, like what all you would need to walking tour guide app development, various challenges, but before going that way, let’s first explore the benefits these apps offer:

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4 Benefits of Developing an Audio Guide App

• Know your History

Each place has its unique and rich history and the tourists would make efforts to capture this splendid information and further share it with visitors from across the globe. Stories never told before can be heard with GPS audio tour app, mini-interviews can be conducted, interesting local or niche histories can be shared which till now were ignored by conventional guides.

Stay assured that your audio tour app will be highly appreciated by people and the coming generations.

• It is huge Fun

So, are you someone who is passionate about your local community and landmarks with immense knowledge about them? If yes, won’t you like to share your in-depth knowledge and unique perspective with the people around the world on a tour guide app? It would be great fun, wouldn’t it? Hurry up and team up with your friends and the local community to create something which represents you as well as which is fun & interesting.

• Long-term Recurring Revenue

By getting an audio guide app developed, you can’t just create value but also bring in recurring revenue in the long-term. The tour guide software can be monetized in whichever way makes sense for the community like you can offer third-party advertisements, banners, additional in-app purchases, or can create a niche tour that can be sold to the city government or an institution.

• Convenience

Smartphones are the norm nowadays. They are the means by which we are navigating through more and more around the globe. Compared to conventional print guide or audio guide, mobile apps are a lot more convenient and will soon replace the former. With the dynamic audio tour guide mobile app, users can make moves as per their own convenience, which makes things easier not just for users but also for guide creators.

These are a few benefits of using the audio tour application over a tour guide. Also, these benefits make these applications a must-have for most tourists around the world. So, if you want to enter the international market with an interesting application that earns great revenue, then you surely are at the right place.

The utility of the Audio Guide Mobile app

By now it is pretty evident that the tourism industry will be greatly benefiting from GPS tour guide software, owing to its ability to make travel and leisure solutions a lot more convenient and fun for the people. Be it nature trails, history museums, art exhibitions, museums, public art, geologic sites, wildlife refuges, or national parks, the experience will certainly be more enriched for the users.

However, the capabilities and benefits of an audio guide app are not just limited to the tourism sector, as it can prove helpful for various other sectors and purposes as well. For instance, the app will also prove helpful in case of Campus tours, parks, greenways, transportation, lodging & camp boards, by providing customized content to enrich the user experiences.

How are Audio Tour Apps more useful as compared to Tour guides?

Well, if it’s about the comparison between these two, then audio tour apps will come out as the ultimate winner, owing to the brilliant features it offers. In fact, you can decide for yourself by answering these questions: What is more fun? Exploring a location at your own pace or a tour guide briefing about a site point to a group of 36 people and hastily taking the group to the next point, leaving no time for self-observation or relaxation? What if you are keen to enjoy the scenic beauty of a site by spending some time over there?

Besides, a tour guide will never give detailed information on a particular site point as they have to cover the entire trip of the location and then jump to another tourist group. Pretty certainly, you will go with an audio tour guide app. After all, every place has its own beauty to explore places on your own like a free bird, without someone dictating every now and then to head here and there.

Next, let’s explore what all it needs for tour guide development:

Top Features:

When you reach out to an app developer for an interesting and interactive mobile app, it is important that you have a list of features that you want in your app. Your dedicated app developer needs to take care of your users and the admin too.
Here we have listed a few features that would help you survive the competition in the best possible way.

Advanced Features of Audio Tour App

Here are a few features that would set your audio tour app apart from the competition and provide it a technical advantage.

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• Google Navigation: This feature is quite crucial in this kind of app as it enables users to find their way to the destination using Google Maps.
• Geo-Tagging: It suggests renowned destinations to the users as per their location, like nearby places to visit, restaurants, and other scenic adventures.
• Weather Forecasts: This feature allows users to prep for the day in advance and choose their attire according to the temperatures.
• Multiple Language: It goes without saying, this feature is incredible for users that don’t know or struggle with some language. However, mostly the app is developed in one language as too many languages require as many scriptwriters and voice writers.
• Multiple Payment Modes: Been able to make in-app payments to restaurants, sites, is quite easier as a number of payment modes are made available to the users such as Braintree, Stripe, PayPal, and? Credit/Debit cards.
• Push Notifications: Users can be kept updated for a lot of things, via this fabulous features, such it will recommend interesting sites to them as per their location, as well as are kept updated regarding new offers and a lot more.

 User-Friendly Features to Include in Your Tour Guide App:

These features are designed considering the end-users. Our experts have been working on similar projects and they understand how the audience would interact with your application. Over the years, we have researched the market to understand what works and what doesn’t with the audience.

• Login/Registration: It is pretty simple to sign-in to the app by simply registering with your essential details, like email ID or social networking credentials.
• Browse/Search Tours: This feature allows users to browse and search for exciting tours that best fits according to their timing and area they are in.
• Preview Tours Are you in two minds regarding visiting a site or not, well it is easy to decide by previewing the tours in the app. Decision-making gets easier that way.
• Download Tours: Tours can be easily downloaded within the app so that users can choose to view them later offline as well.
• Place View Point Map: Users can fix the viewpoint within a site and find a way towards it using the maps.
• Google Navigation: It certainly is the best thing ever, ensuring the users never miss the right path. It signals them towards the right destination, thus making the tour incredibly easy for users.
• Additional Information: App users can find all the information regarding the ticket prices, the best time to visit, as well as brief information about the places and other things.
• Create Your Lists: Users can easily create a tour list by adding their desired tours into the wishlist and later execute them.
• Social Share: This feature allows users to share the tours on social media; however only viewers who have subscribed to the app will be able to view the tour video and others will just be able to see the preview.
• Review Place: This feature can be very helpful for the app users as they can share their experiences as reviews, which other users will find useful and can decide their tour accordingly.
• View Tour History: The app enables users to view their past tours within the app, so refresh up the memory and plan accordingly for the next.
• The Panic Button: One of the Important features for security purposes that allows the tourist to swipe a maximum of 10 to 12 contacts in your phone. In case of emergency, an alarm hits the mobile phones of the five registered users, and accordingly, the location of the user is delivered within 5 to 10 seconds.

Admin Features to Make It Easier for You to Manage Your App Easily:

These features are developed considering the admin end. Here you can check various activities on your application and can edit the information that is fed. Also, you can manage who uses your applications and what features are to go public.

• User management: From this section, the admin can manage all the app users and function the tasks accordingly for them.
• Manage Content: This is from where the admin manages the app content which is shown to the users, such as tours, media, etc.
• Track Payments: Payments made by the users can be easily tracked by the Admin from this section, thus making the functioning a lot easier.
• Marketing Tools: Admin can make the best use of marketing tools, such as SMS, Email, Push Notifications, Attractive offers during a seasonal time and a lot more.

These are just a few features that you need to focus on. If you want an app that not only helps you settle your business but build a digital identity too, just hire mobile app development experts who can help you bring an amazing experience for your customers.

If you are looking forward to building a strong solution then you need to hire a team that is well-versed with the audience behavior and technology. Our team can help you stay updated with scalable solutions that are flexible and help you earn the best results.

Content Development Is Real Challenge-

When talking about an audio tour app, content development hands down are the real challenge here. Even though the vital information about the sites can be easily collected from Google but still a lot needs to be arranged, such as Photographs, Voice Artists, Scriptwriters (who also need to decide that how much time each viewpoint should be given), background score (this will differ as per the location and city, then local music needs to be sourced as that works best for this purpose, and not to forget the corporate rights).

Local experts will need to be hired to get the best and unique information about the sites. All in all, it needs an incredible amount of research and an audio tour app builder to make the idea work.

Other than this, there are several more challenges that an audio tour app development team faces. As one gets the information on the screen it becomes easier for the service providers to further decide the aesthetics and looks of the application.

Once you are done with the research and information gathering, the next step is to decide the right technology that can make your app durable and scalable.

Technology Stack:

Now that you have reached an expert, be clear if you want an Android based app, iOS based app, or a cross-platform app. No matter which of these you choose, discuss with your developer the technology stack that would be used.

At Octal IT Solutions, we are a team of experts who deliver solutions that are technologically advanced and can make a strong presence in the market. Over the years our experts have gained masters over these technologies and can help you survive the evolving trends easily. If you are looking forward to earning some interesting solutions then we are just a click away.

• For storage or caching with CDNs, it is better to use Amazon S3
• For the primary platform structure, App Developer can take the help of Google Cloud platforms or Dataproc.
• Push Notifications:Twilio,Push.io
• SMS, Voice, and Phone Verification-Nexmo,?Twilio
• Payments: Braintree & PayPal, Stripe, EWallets, banking, Debit/Credit Card
• Mandrill: for everything related to emails
• Database: MongoDB, HBase, Cassandra, Postgress, Mail Chimp Integration
• Cloud Environment: AWS
• Real-time Analytics: Hadoop, Spark, BigData, Apache Flink, Cisco, IBM
• Streaming Media System: Helix Universal Server, Wowza Streaming Engine, Nimble Streamer
• Weather Forecasts: Open Weather Map API
• Maps: Google Maps API
• Nearby Places: Google Places API

You can ask your app developer for more alternatives if you aren’t satisfied with these. The app development field today is seeing a revolutionizing development with various languages and frameworks put together to make things easier.

If you want any specific technology to be used for application our experts can help you there too. They can also, suggest to you some better alternatives and options that would make it easier for you to make choices that help you reduce the cost of the development of the audio tour application.

Audio Tour Streaming Architecture

How much it cost to develop an audio tour guide?

When it comes to developing an audio tour guide, it becomes quite complicated. We have been working in the direction of providing the best services at the most affordable rates. The cost of development of your application would be dependent on various factors.

1. Feature Set

The feature set of the application is a strong factor that determines the cost of development of the application. If you are looking forward to building a strong solution that can help you through, then you are at the right place. The simple application with limited features costs around $35000 to $70000 and the advanced solutions may cost from $85000 to $120000.

2. Region of the Development Agency

When it comes to developing an audio tour guide app the basic expenses can be noted as follows:

When it comes to developing an audio tour guide app the basic expenses can be noted as follows:

• US-based developers: $100 to $250 per hour
• Eastern Europe-based developers: $80 to $180 per hour
• India-based developers: $25 to $50 per hour

3. The platform of the Application 

If you are looking forward to developing a feature-rich audio tour booking mobile application can cost you somewhere between $37,000 to $75000 for a single platform. If you are looking forward to a hybrid mobile app for both platforms along with a kiosk web portal the cost will go high accordingly.

These are a few factors that determine the cost of the development of an audio tour application. If you have an idea and need experts to help you through, we are a click away!

Choosing the Right Development Partner Is Important

Once the research is done, it is time to hire the best mobile app development team out there that understands your requirements for the app and eagerly work to fulfill them. It is integral to hire a knowledgeable bunch of designers, developers, Testers, & QA Analysts who are also experienced in this arena, as this ensures Quality.

At Octal IT Solution, we have a team of experienced developers who have been delivering user-friendly unique app solutions to people around the world.