Detour

Detour is a mobile application that offers GPS-enabled guided walking tours using the voices of famous people and local experts to narrate journeys across 18 cities, and counting. There is a vast selection of different tours depending on your preference, from historical to foodie, that will truly bring a city to life by revealing places you never knew existed with just a mobile and your headphones.

Detour sets itself apart from traditional walking tours by virtue of its flexibility. With the app, not only do you not have to arrive at a certain place at a certain time, you can pause and play the recording whenever you want. It’s also rather different from the conventional audio tour, as it uses GPS to keep in sync with where you are and what you’re looking at, rather than having to press any buttons to indicate it.

There is also the option of augmented reality, which means that by simply holding up the phone’s camera at certain points, you can see what it would have looked like historically.

One of the problems with Detour is that it is currently only available in a few cities due to the time taken to source and record content for publication, whereas there are already well-established walking tours in most cities, with guides who can be asked questions at any given point.

Also, although the app is free to download, each tour costs money to buy, whereas many walking tours in major cities are free to join with the option to tip at the end. Tours on the app in Europe, for example, cost as much as $8 USD each, which means that downloading a few can start to look quite expensive. Nevertheless, overall it is a very innovative app that is changing the way people experience new locations.

David Jones

I am a professional travel writer and travel enthusiast who traveled the world twice, so I am sharing my firsthand knowledge about everything related to travel and spending time abroad.