What could be better than having an insider walk you through his or her favourite spots in a new city or travel destination? How about having access to a whole library of such tours that can be downloaded right to your iPod or MP3 player? That's what Chicago-based AudioSnacks is offering consumers. Users can download audio tours of select destinations and can put up their own tours for purchase.
“AudioSnack is a place to find, purchase, download, listen to and appreciate audio tours that people just like you have created to share, and a place where you can do the same for others.” Tours are modestly priced—some are even free. Many feature downloadable maps to accompany the audio footage, and customers can listen to a sample snippet of a tour before deciding to purchase.
Already there are tours available for destinations in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa and more. Customers get a unique perspective and insights: they can take an audio tour through Chicago with a Jewish hip-hop poet, for instance, or see the sights in Seattle with a hot DJ. Since members are encouraged to create and upload their own tours, the library is likely to grow quickly. The company is also building a new section, offering campus tours for (upcoming) freshmen "who look lost no matter how many times they've looked at their maps."
While AudioSnacks isn't the only company offering MP3 tours (see Soundwalk, TourCaster, Tourist Tracks and others), letting users upload and sell their own tours makes for an interesting twist. It's a great example of Generation C(ash): consumers are producing valuable content, and expect to be rewarded accordingly. Definitely one to set up in your own country or language.
Website: www.audiosnacks.com
Contact: audiosnacks@gmail.com
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QUOTE: ' Definitely one to set up in your own country or language.'
Not sure either,
NL: soundseeing.nl
FR: mp3travel.com and pocketvox
DE: iAudioguide.com
I agree with Ulrika, where is the business if tourist offices offer those guides for free? Why bother to pay if your find 40 free tours on iAudioguide and similar websites?
I disagree with the above comments. Why go to 5 different sites, when you can go to one and get everything for the same cost?! Most importantly, this site is done for the people, by the people and being a people person myself- I love that concept! I love to travel and I have never been impressed with an audio tour to date. I downloaded one of the tours off of AudioSnacks (recommendation from a friend) from a place I had previously traveled and listened to it while working out. I escaped reality for an hour and was completely entertained.
When online booking my flight for my next trip, my second stop will be AudioSnacks.
I have set up a website that allows users to browse through a directory of all the audio tours that I can find.
www.tourdio.com
There are thousands of them. Some are free, others are charged at different rates.
The idea of the site is just to put you in touch with the audio tour companies and let you hear a sample of their tour (that is if they allow me to publish it - most do) so that you can make up your own mind.
We only link to providers of audio tours if we are certain that the product that they offer is of a very good quality. We cut down the amount of time it takes to find these things.
Hope that you use the site and that you enjoy it.
www.tourdio.com
I am Commercial Director of Cities in Sound and saw mention of us (www.citiesinsound.com) in Ulrika's comments earlier. We at Cities in Sound are finding that travellers are happy to pay for good quality audio tours (eg with interesting/accurate/quirky content, professional narration, and a cultural/sound experience with relevant music, sound effects, on-location sounds, and "interviews"). Find our tours on AudioSnacks or at our website: www.citiesinsound.com
This is a market that will definitely grow. There's room for" one stop shops" like Audiosnacks and also companies selling direct - it's just different sales channels. What matters is the quality of the product! I'm sure a free guide from the Tourist board is a different experience than one you pay for. I've taken a few of these tours now, most recently I tried www.soundmap.co.uk who do London walks. It was a great experience - it's totally different from following a tour guide; having music and interviews makes you feel you're really discovering an area. With so many people having iPods now this seems a really obvious use for them.
Yes this idea is booming.
We have been running www.audioguide2go.com for
a couple of years now.
We started with the UK and have had such great feedback that we are launching worldwide coverage soon.We have hundreds of tours and guides available including Bobs from Cities in Sound.
We include something for everyone from commercial guides to top tourist cities to nature trails and community produced audio walks.Many are free and those that aren't are reasonable.Users are invited to review tours online.
There is room for all of us as we all seem to have a slightly different slant on the idea.
We started from trying to find tours ourselves and having to plough through google.
Why not have a look
www.audiogude2go Audio Trails Walks and Tours
Not sure this is a huge opportunity, as similar project podguides.net had a lot of attention with the same concept years ago, but just almost nobody uploaded any content. And the bulk of 'user generated content' are actually professionally produced guides in reasonable quality. The user generated part is often of really poor quality, and I wonder who would pay for this given the huge choice of professional and affordable (tourcaster.com, pocketvox.com, citiesinsound.com) and even free audio guides (iTunes travel podcast section or iAudioguide.com with more some 40 cities with professionally produced free guides by tourist offices) .
Ulrika | April 18, 2007 6:17 PM