An audio guide with no tour to follow
An audio tour is a route somebody else planned, played in the order they chose. Guideling has no route and no order. It follows the road you're actually on and tells you about what's coming up, including on roads nobody ever made a tour for.
Side by side
| Guideling | Audio tour app | Travel podcast | Guidebook | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works on a route you made up this morning | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Talks about what's out of the window right now | Yes | On its route only | No | If you look it up |
| Needs your hands or eyes while moving | Never | To start and keep pace | To choose and skip | Entirely |
| Goes quiet when there's nothing to say | Yes | Plays to the end | Plays to the end | Yes |
| Usable at 120 km/h | Yes | Rarely | Yes | No |
| Runs alongside your map app | Yes | Competes with it | Competes with it | Yes |
| Depth on one chosen place | A sentence or two | Its whole purpose | An hour of it | Pages |
| Someone chose the order | No, the road does | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | Five stories free, then a pass | Per tour or subscription | Free | Per book |
The difference
An audio tour is a recording with a map attached. Someone walked the route, wrote the script and recorded it in order. It's often excellent, and it stops working the moment you leave the line. Take a different bridge and it goes silent, or tells you about something two streets away.
Guideling is a map with a voice attached. There's no script and no route. It works out which places you're about to pass, checks which of them you'll be able to see from your road, and picks the ones worth a sentence. Every road is covered because no road was chosen.
When to use something else
You want two hours on one old town. Buy the walking tour a local historian wrote. Depth in one place, in a deliberate order, is what a written tour is for, and what an automatic one can't do.
You want to be taken inside. A human guide gets you through the door, answers the question you didn't know how to ask, and notices when the group is tired.
You want directions read out. Guideling never speaks directions. Keep Google Maps, Apple Maps or Waze; Guideling runs alongside them.
What's left is the ground between the tours: the four hours of road, the branch line, the valley you drive through once and never learn the name of. That's what Guideling is for.
Questions
What is the difference between Guideling and an audio tour app?
An audio tour is a fixed route with a fixed order, downloaded before you go and played as you follow it. Guideling has no route and no order. It follows where you're actually going and talks about what's coming up, on any road.
Is there an audio guide that works on any road, not a set route?
That's what Guideling does. It works from a map of the whole region rather than an itinerary, so it has something to say on a motorway, a farm road or a city street, and says nothing when there's nothing worth saying.
Do I have to follow a route with Guideling?
No. Drive anywhere, change your mind, take a wrong turn or double back. Telling it your destination is optional; it only helps it load stories further ahead.
When is a guided audio tour still the better choice?
When you want depth in one place rather than breadth across a journey. A two-hour tour of one old town, written by someone who chose the order, will beat anything automatic. Guideling is for the ground between those places.
Can I use Guideling instead of a human tour guide?
No, and it isn't trying to be one. A guide answers your questions and takes you inside buildings. Guideling tells you what you're passing while you pass it.
Does Guideling replace my navigation app?
No. It never speaks directions, because two voices timed to the metre means one of them talks over the other. Keep the map you like; Guideling runs alongside it and stays out of the way of turn instructions.
On a road trip · On foot and on a bike · Pricing · Other questions
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