This week we’re having a look at a commonly overlooked type of tour your business is probably missing out on: Audio Tours for Kids! While doing some background research for this article I found tours aimed at the family and youth markets are thriving.
Most tour operators have become so focused on adding Audio Tour hardware, or upgrading their vehicles and vessels with multilingual audio tour capability, they haven’t even considered accommodating this large portion of the tourism market.
What about the Kids? Most tours are aimed at adults as their primary market, however, if you’re not addressing the fact so many families are travelling with their kids you’re actually creating an environment that is conducive to turning families away from your business!
Most parents want to find experiences their whole family can enjoy, and participate in. High quality audio tours can truly be an amazing experience for adults. Unfortunately, when kids are exposed to the same tour with content created for the adult listener; they get bored out of their minds very quickly. For the children; the adult tour is just another experience their parents will enjoy while the kids become increasingly restless. Once this scenario develops, the kids will begin looking for something to entertain themselves with, and become a distraction to their parents, as well as the other tour takers. Q: Why are they trying to entertain themselves? A: Because you are not entertaining them!
Since it is difficult to create one audio commentary to fit all ages; some keen tour operators are now designing audio tours specifically for kids! This is a very wise approach, as it opens your tours to the whole family, not just adults only. Consider this: if you were travelling with your kids, and saw an opportunity to go on an amazing tour of an area you always wanted to see and learn more about, could you spontaneously decide to go? Not likely! The odds are it would be a tour designed for adults only, so what are you going to do about the kids? Well, maybe some other time you’ll get a second chance for a once in a lifetime tour!
Let’s look at different ways you could offer this service: Using our GPS bus audio system: Both parents and their children can take the same tour together, with children having their own dedicated kids’ tour channel. This allows the whole family to participate in the fun.
Museums are offering tours specific to kids and teens as well. Often these tours use our hand held Audio Guides. Once again the system can be set-up to offer an audio tour specific to children, teens, and adults with content stored in dedicated folders. The adults can take an identical tour with their own Audio Guide utilizing the regular adult content channels while they escort their kids through the Museum.
In these challenging economic times, broadening your market appeal to families with kids will further differentiate your sightseeing business. And in a meaningful way: According to a recent report, the Ipsos Mendelsohn 2011 Annual Affluent Survey, vacation travel decisions are being largely discussed and influenced by kids.
