Designing Tours for every visitor

Museums welcome visitors with many different backgrounds, interests, abilities, and expectations. A parent with young children moves through the space very differently from a senior visitor. A first time guest may want an overview while a returning visitor might prefer more depth. Some visitors want independence and quiet. Others appreciate structure and guidance.

Tours was created to support this wide range of needs. It gives museums a simple way to design guided paths for different audiences, directly through the browser, with no app downloads or extra hardware required.

A guided experience that adapts to each visitor

Tours allows museums to build multiple versions of a self guided experience that feel tailored and intentional. Examples include:

• a kids tour with age appropriate language and prompts
• a tour for caregivers who want a quick and efficient route through highlights
• a slower paced version for visitors who enjoy longer dwell time
• a quiet and self directed tour for introverts or solo visitors
• a sensory considerate tour designed to reduce overwhelm
• an interest based tour built around a specific theme or story

Visitors can choose the path that fits their energy, comfort, and curiosity.

Why Empower’s Tours matters

Visitors increasingly want experiences that feel flexible and personal. Self-guided tours give them autonomy and ease, as well as the confidence to move at their own pace. They can pause, skip, or revisit content without waiting for a scheduled program or navigating group settings.

Research on digital visitor engagement supports this shift:

“Virtual museum tours can become an essential resource that increases visitor satisfaction and raises their intention to share their experiences, including online reviews.”
Source: Digital Engagement and Its Impact on Museum Visitation

For museums, Tours helps create these experiences in a way that is simple to manage and easy to update:
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• It works indoors and outdoors
• It removes the need for printed materials
• It reduces staff load while improving the visitor journey
• It provides accessible storytelling because everything works in the browser

Accessibility research also reinforces the value of inclusive mobile design. In a study from a historic house museum, the design team noted:

“Focusing on accessibility and inclusive web and mobile design made the content available to a much broader audience, including sensory sensitive and mobility impaired visitors.”
Source: A Path With Choice: What We Learned From Designing an Inclusive Audio Guide

These findings support what many museums already know. Digital tools are at their best when they remove barriers and welcome more people into the experience.

How Pathways strengthens the tour experience

Tours becomes even more powerful when paired with Pathways, Pladia’s landmark-based and beacon-free step by step navigation tool. Pathways helps visitors find their way with intuitive on screen directions that guide them from point to point without beacons, sensors, or specialized infrastructure.

When Tours and Pathways are used together, museums can create complete visitor journeys that include:

• a clear route through the exhibition
• turn by turn guidance between stops
• contextual storytelling at each moment of the tour
• accessible navigation for visitors who need additional support

The combination gives every visitor the confidence to explore independently, whether they are navigating a busy gallery, a large campus, or a historic property with multiple buildings.

Looking ahead

As more institutions explore Tours, we expect to see new approaches to audience specific storytelling, accessibility, and wayfinding. Cultural spaces are discovering that offering multiple paths through a space helps more visitors feel seen and supported.

If your team is exploring new ways to offer self guided experiences, Tours and Pathways provide a flexible and intuitive foundation. Everything is created and managed in one place and visitors can begin exploring instantly on their own device.

Start building your first tour at www.pladia.io.

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