A guided tour the whole group understands
The guide speaks once. The group hears it in their own languages on their own phones, so there is no splitting the group by language and no running the tour twice.
A museum with visitors from abroad has two ways out today: recorded audio guides, which are not the guide's tour but something else, or splitting the group and doing the tour twice. The first loses what makes a tour good — that the guide answers — and the second costs twice the time.
Where the audio comes from
From the guide's belt pack. A lapel microphone and a small transmitter in the pocket, which is exactly the kit many guides already carry to be heard in a room with echo.
How it is set up
- 1
The guide wears their lapel microphone, connected to the box that sends.
- 2
The group scans a code at the start and picks a language.
- 3
The tour happens once, in the guide's language.
- 4
Each visitor listens on their own earphones, without the guide raising their voice.
Why it fits a tour
The group is not split
One tour, one guide, one route. The languages travel underneath and force nothing to be repeated.
Questions are still the tour
What makes a guide different from an audio guide is that they answer. Here the answers are translated too.
No kit to hand out
No receivers, no wiping them down between groups, no counting them at the end. Everybody carries theirs in their pocket.
It works while moving
The group moves between rooms and the audio travels over each person's own phone connection, not over a transmitter with a range.
When this is not for you
Somewhere with no coverage — a crypt, a mine, a basement — this does not work, and a classic radio system is still the answer there. And in a very noisy room, a visitor with no earphones will not hear anything through a phone speaker.
Questions people ask
- Do visitors need wifi?
- They need data or wifi. The museum's public network is enough; with neither, no.
- What about a group of forty?
- Size makes no difference: there is no kit to hand out and no charge per listener.
- Can the guide see who is connected?
- Yes, the room shows how many are listening and in which languages. Useful for knowing whether one is worth keeping open.
- Can it be used outdoors?
- Yes, wherever there is coverage. A walking tour of the old town works the same as one inside the museum.