How to create a city walking tour and sell it, in 5 steps

Summer is coming and more people are keen to visit your favorite city. You’re a local person and you’d like to let more visitors know the hidden gems of your city (like I did, as a native Parisian)? Then this article is made for you! So in 5 steps, I’ll show you how to create a walking tour.

1. Choose a city to create a walking tour

Which city do you have some good knowledge about? It could be your native city or any city where you’ve spent time. If you have knowledge that others don’t have, if you feel positive emotions toward one particular city, then that should be the right choice.

Once you have your city, there is some information to get before you start building your tour.

Assess the demand.

Is your city considered as touristic like in Paris? Are people coming to see one particular wonder in a city, like the winery in Bordeaux? Or is there a particular event coming up that will attract a lot of tourists, like the Monaco GP?

You need to answer “yes” to one of these questions. From there, you’ll be able to build a game around the reason why visitors are coming. If you can’t answer any of these questions, you might consider choosing another city.

Define your target audience.

Once you know what demand you’re addressing, think about your players, and your target audience. Are they family? Formula 1’s fans? Or couples going for a honeymoon?

Try to imagine your persona, like we do in marketing. This will indeed help you build a game that will please most of the people playing it.

Once you’ve got your location, your audience, and the reason why they come, then you can start developing the tour.

2. Develop a tour

In this article, we will build the tour using Loquiz. This platform allows you to easily create your own city tour using GPS, quiz, and media features. Moreover, you can also ultimately define your rules.

For instance, would you like to offer several paths at once in one tour? It’s possible. What about creating an inventory where the player gathers items that will affect the city tour’s story? It’s also possible.

Let’s go step by step into creating our walking tour.

Determine the central theme to create a walking tour

To make a game, let’s first think about the central theme. We need a story that keeps our visitors hooked on your walking tour.

Think about a historical fact of your city or a hidden gem that nobody knows… You might be the only one to acknowledge it. And yet, many visitors would be delighted to learn something that other people don’t.

Develop an itinerary for the tour

Once you have a central idea and a story for your walking tour, it’s time to develop an itinerary.

To do so, we can use the platform Loquiz. If you don’t have an account, then you can create a free account here.

From the Loquiz account, create a game, add tasks, and set their location on the map.

Pick attractions to incorporate on the path

Using your tasks, make sure that some of them reach the points of interest, the important attractions for your walking tour.

Set the duration and distance

How long would your group be able to enjoy a walking tour? From my experience, I would give the following values:

• If the location has a harsh climate (e.g. Sevilla having high temperatures in summer), I recommend one hour.
• If the location has a mild climate, suitable for a long walk (like on the Californian coast), I recommend up to two hours.

A walking tour shouldn’t be too long, especially if you sell it to families. Indeed, children might start to get bored after walking 2 hours around the same story.

On Loquiz, you can change the game duration by going on the page “3. Configurations”, then tick “Duration” and typing the number of minutes.

And for the distance, you’ll need to be careful about this. If you target family, I advise you to have less than 4 kilometers. Children can’t walk as long as adults.

But if you target people who are willing to walk long distances, it’s okay to go up to 10 kilometers.

Create your logic to create a walking tour

With the Loquiz Creator, you can typically create any logic. Using the different logical blocks, you can build one or several paths according to your story and your needs.

For instance, a simple logic where tasks appear one after another will look like this:

If the logic seems a bit complex to apprehend, you have 2 possibilities:

• Take the free Loquiz course on Udemy.
• Book a free 30-minute demo session with me.

Test your walking tour

Once your game is “ready”, do NOT sell it right away! You will have some issues if you proceed in this way!

Instead, test it as many times as possible. With Loquiz, you can test your tour without spending anything. Additionally, the test mode offers a fake GPS, as you might not go every day on your walk tour locations.

From the tests, make sure you adjust as many settings as possible until you have a refined game.

In my experience, I’ve often been spending more time testing the game and adjusting than developing it. So, good luck with this step!

When you have a game that pleases your testers, it’s time to go to the next step!

3. Build a shop and sell on platforms

With your series of games, it’s time to earn from them. To do so, you can build a website first. We advise you not to send Loquiz tickets one by one. Instead, create an automation system using API.

If you’re not familiar with developing API connections (which is my case), then you should follow my tutorial video:

Besides, you can also sell the walking tour on platforms like GetYourGuide, Eventbrite, or Viator. You can also connect to these websites using the no-code solution as in the tutorial.

4. Market it, meet tourism stakeholders, create partnerships

Once your walking tours are on your website and platforms, it might not be enough to generate revenue from them. You also need to make them known to the different stakeholders in the tourism industry.

Your walking tour is a unique opportunity for local tourism to attract people from many points of interest most conveniently and flexibly.

Contact local museums, restaurants, monuments, etc. Then offer partnerships with them. Here are a few benefits for them:

• You can bring more visitors to their venue
• Visitors can learn from your walking tour
• They can add another offer in their shop, that could interest the tourists
• Some tourists prefer to visit by themselves, without any guides
• It’s easier to manage more visitors with walking tours

Using these advantages, you can offer these venues to sell your tours through flyers or on their website.

We advise you to spend considerable time on this until you find the right partnership.

5. Get feedback and update your game

Once you sell your walking tour… You’ll never succeed in making everyone pleased with your game! And that’s quite a harsh truth. You will indeed face criticism regarding your game.

But that’s part of the walking tour development! These comments should be considered as feedback. Over the sales of your games, you’ll always need to provide updates to your content.

If you’ve already tested a successful walking tour made by another company, I can ensure you this:

They’ve been through many criticisms before delivering a refined version like the one you tested. If you played their first version, you’ll be stunned by how different it is.

Conclusion: Apply a winning game in other cities to create a walking tour

I sincerely hope for you that your walking tour will be a success. And with Loquiz, the automation, the platform, and the partnerships, you may succeed.

After months or years of sales and marketing, you might have one winning product, one game that makes more than 50 % of your sales.

If that’s the case, then you need to start thinking about how you can apply the same rules in a different city (or district), with a different story. Using Loquiz, you can easily clone your game and move all the pins.

I wish you great luck in creating your own walking tour. If you need more insight on how to apply your ideas to Loquiz, feel free to book a free 30-minute demo with me!