Cell phone tour

Cell Phone Audio Tours

Audio tours provide pre-recorded audio interpretation to visitors of museums, art galleries, zoos, aquariums, national parks as well as many other venues. Traditional audio tours require the exhibitor to provide guests with the equipment needed to hear the content, such as an audio wand or MP3 player. Cell phone audio tours however, leverage the fact that most visitors already have the equipment needed to take the audio tour, being their cell phones. There are however, many reasons why venues choose not to implement the traditional audio tours. Mainly due to the capital expenditures needed to purchase the equipment; along requiring additional manpower to distribute and maintain the equipment. Another reason is to reduce customer hassle, as far as standing in line or paying and waiting for the needed wands or MP3 players. Some venues also simply can’t afford enough equipment to satisfy all of their customers. In almost every group that visits a museum at least one of the members will own a cell phone. By implementing a cell phone audio tour, visitors with phones are able learn about whatever they want at their own pace. This is referred to as snacking on the information, such as (OnCell Snacking), choosing individual exhibits of interest to learn more about.

Creating a Cell Phone Tour

Creating a cell phone tour is fun and simple, furthermore can be done by basically anyone. Most sites will repurpose existing audio content, or some will record new content either by phone or computer recording. Once the content has been recorded, it can be quickly uploaded to the appropriate field on a provided web interface and the tour is ready to go live. The better providers of this service will enable you to view and export real time statistics on the tour through your web interface. These statistics will include information such as: call duration, average call length over all and per stop, number of unique calls, and average number of calls per day, these statistics are all usually represented graphically for easy interpretation. Each venue is assigned a dial in number to market to their visitors. This phone number and the appropriate stop number, can then be put on a small sign and placed next the exhibit. Once a visitor has dialed in, they will be prompted and can enter the corresponding stop number of the exhibit they’re viewing, to hear the recorded content. Most providers will allow their customers an unlimited number of stops, with up to two hours of recorded content. These tours also enable the visitors to: fast forward, rewind, pause, as well as leave a feedback message for each exhibit or the whole tour; simply by pressing a number. Due to the number of American cell phone owners and the flexibility in new phone plans, these tours have proven successful for venues of all sizes. Aside from just audio content, some providers are also able to stream video, and text message recent visitors with updates. This system is very simple to use, yet enjoyable for both the visitors as well as the venue staff.