City audio guides

City audio guides are becoming increasingly popular due to the greater availability of cheap weekend breaks and the growth of oral rather than written information. According to market researchers Mintel, the short breaks abroad market which has been stimulated by favourable exchange rates and low cost airlines, will grow at a faster rate than all other holidays. The market is currently worth £1.7bn per annum.[1]

There is now a growing number of audio city guides of which mp3cityguides.com is probably the best known. It allows customers to download onto their iPod or MP3 player a range of city guides. These city guides consist of an audio tour ofBarcelona, Paris, Prague, Florence and Amsterdam amongst other cities which can be downloaded onto an iPod, mp3 player or, increasingly, a mobile phone.

According to research by mp3cityguides.com[2], a growing number of customers are looking for a downloadable city guide that they can listen to as they explore a city. As the Internet continues to grow at the expense of conventional paper printing, audio city tours are becoming increasing popular.

Similarly, with the decline of traditional sound media such as cassettes and music CDs, this new generation of audio city tours have been created to be downloaded rather than sold as CDs in shops or online. Downloadable city guides are still in their infancy but are growing in the wake of the popularity of music downloading through iTunes and Napster amongst others. Forrester Research estimates that in Europe, music downloads will grow from approximately EURO 23m in 2003 to EURO 4bn in 2011[3]. City audio guides are benefiting from this growth, albeit slowly.

The growth in cheap weekend breaks and cheap city breaks has also fuelled the growth of these city guides. Not only does this greater availability of cheap weekend breaks mean that there is a greater demand for city guides but consumers of these cheap city breaks are looking to buy a guide to Paris, a guide Barcelona or a guide to Florence which is also more affordable. Typically city audio guides are priced below most conventional city guide books and customers who are looking for cheap weekend breaks are responding to this pricing policy, according to research carried out amongst 1,500 purchasers of cheap city breaks by mp3cityguides. Sixty four per cent of those asked stated that price was ‘very important’ when considering the purchase of a city guide.

As well as audio tours of city walks, downloadable city guides that include information about attractions, events and, shops, restaurants and bars and are available to download onto iPods, mp3 players or mobile phones are also increasingly common now. Research shows that even today, consumers like to have detailed information about cities in writing and so many city audio guides have printed material as well in their guide toPrague, guide to Barcelona and guide to Venice amongst others.

Maps and other recommendations for restaurants, shops and bars as well as guides to museums and galleries in Florence and help with what to do in Paris, for instance, can be downloaded as pdf files and printed out.

References

Mintel - City and Short breaks abroad UK. Published May 2006

Forrester - European Music Download forecast 2006 to 2011. By Rebecca Jennings. Published 27 March 2006[

mp3cityguides - Research published January 2007

See also

• City Audio Guides - http://www.variantguide.com
• Directory of audio tours
• Krakow Audio Guide