The new service AudioTripper begins with an offering of audio tours for about a dozen big U.S. and European tourist destinations. Common Sense and Whiskey asked AudioTripper co-founder Garren P. Givens five questions about the service:
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1. Tell us about AudioTripper, and why we'd want to use it.
AudioTripper is a service dedicated to providing high quality yet extremely affordable self-guided tours for your mp3 player. AudioTripper is aimed at tech-savvy travelers, but you don’t need any fancy technology—you just download your tours then go, simple as that.
The main advantages offered by AudioTripper over traditional travel books and guided tours are the cost and the convenience. At roughly a dollar per download, you can travel at your own pace and on your own schedule. Plus, you get many of the same insights into these landmarks you would otherwise, but without the heavy guidebook or expensive local tour guide.
2. How long is a typical audio tour? Does one tour cover a whole city? Do you wear it around all day, or what?
Unlike most guided tours that are long and take you around an entire city, each of our tours is devoted to a single landmark or point of interest. This gives our listeners greater flexibility to design their own itineraries around what they want to see and do.
Most travelers like to explore new cities at their own pace, and our tours allow you to do just that without the need to plan an afternoon around a guided walk. Our tracks average between 4 and 15 minutes depending on the site—our museum tours are typically the longest—and the short format also allows us to keep our prices very affordable. That said, you could easily build an hour or two around our tours should you wish to spend an afternoon exploring—perfect for short trips and layovers.
3. Where do you find the people who narrate the tours? Are they pro voiceover people?
We don’t want to give away the recipe for our “secret sauce” but we can give some insight into what we believe makes a good guided tour. We first look for researchers that can bring the right mix of background, history, detail, and color to a tour. We then work with our small team made up of experienced voice over actors, sound editors, writers, avid travelers, and ex-pats to produce the best-possible product at the most affordable price for our customers.
4. I see there are thirteen cities on offer at the moment. What's your plan to add more?
We are already working to expand our library to include more cities, though we want to see where the demand comes from before going too far down a particular road. We’ll take our cue from customers as to whether we should expand the number of tours we offer per city or whether we continue to focus on just the most well known landmarks in each city that we add to our library. That said, we have built a scalable product that allows us to expand quickly in a number of different directions, so look for new and innovative products on the horizon.
5. Obviously, you want to cover the main tourist spots first. After that, what are your plans for spots that are still mainstream tourist destinations but a little more off the beaten track - say, places like Angkor Wat or Macchu Piccu?
The beauty of AudioTripper tours is that you can take them absolutely anywhere. Although we have built a small library of nearly 90 tours around some of the most visited capitals in the U.S. and Western Europe, I see our product as a perfect match for intrepid travelers who veer further from the beaten track.
First of all, these places tend to offer fewer alternatives for travelers and often include language barriers. Here travelers could really benefit from self-guided mp3 tours. But, we’ll wait and see what the response is before we venture too far afield.
However, this raises a good point. We see AudioTripper as an extension of the online travel community. As a small company, we are only as good as the ideas and feedback that come from our listeners. We encourage people to write to us, blog about our product, or visit us on facebook. We always do our best to respond to questions and comments, and look forward to keeping the community informed about our growth.
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Visit AudioTripper here.
See also their blog.
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