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What exactly are GPS triggers?
Picture this: a visitor walks along your walking route or through a historic town centre and, at exactly the right moment, hears the story of the place where they’re standing. No hunting for buttons, no typing in numbers: it just happens. That’s a GPS trigger.
A GPS trigger is a location point that you set up in your audio tour in advance. As soon as a visitor with their phone enters that area, the matching clip starts automatically. No technical hassle for you and no fuss for your visitor.
How does it work in practice?
In the platform, you simply set a location and link the right clip to it: text, images, video or a spoken story. Once the tour is live, the technology does the rest. The visitor opens the tour straight in the browser, without an app, and the system recognises where they are.
The result is an audio tour that moves with the visitor rather than the other way round.
Indoors, GPS isn’t accurate enough to start a clip in the right room. There, visitors scan a QR code or type in the stop number; you can combine both in one tour. If the GPS signal drops out outdoors, visitors pick their stop on the map.
Why this improves the experience
No break in attention
Visitors don’t have to stop to look something up. They walk, look and listen in one smooth flow. That means more attention for the story and less distraction from a screen.
Depth that comes naturally
Where more explanation is relevant, it comes up by itself. That way visitors get more depth exactly where they want it, without having to search for it.
Works in every language
Because GPS triggers are linked to the clip, not to the language, automatic playback also works in a multilingual tour. A visitor who follows the tour in one of the more than 70 available languages automatically hears their own language version at the same location.
Especially valuable for inclusion
For visitors who find reading difficult, have a visual impairment or don’t speak the language fluently, automatic playback is a big advantage. Nothing needs to be read, searched for or set up: the story simply begins, at the right moment.
Who is this relevant for?
GPS triggers are particularly valuable for:
- Museums and heritage organisations with a garden, grounds or an outdoor route. Indoors you work with QR codes or stop numbers.
- City walks and historic centres, where routes run outdoors and cover longer distances.
- Nature and visitor centres, where information points are spread across an area.
- Companies with tours of outdoor grounds, where an explanation at each step of the process is relevant.
- Educational institutions and schools, where pupils follow a route on their own.
Setting up GPS triggers without technical knowledge
The beauty of GPS triggers is that the complexity stays out of sight. You set up the locations and clips once, in your own branding, and from then on it simply works, for every visitor and in every language. No apps to install and no technical knowledge needed.
Curious what GPS triggers would look like in a tour that suits your location? Book a free, no-obligation consultation.