Drop the paper map: Guidebook announces tours app

Guidebook today announced the availability of Guidebook Tours, the latest addition to the company’s event app product line. Guidebook Tours enables college admissions professionals and others to create self-guided walking tours for their campuses, allowing prospective students to experience campus walking tours on their own time at their own pace, from any mobile device. Admissions professionals can now reach an even wider audience of prospective students than ever before possible.

Campus tours deliver one of the most impactful tools for college admissions professionals. According to Student Poll, 65 percent of students see the campus tour as the most influential in their enrollment decision. As a result, demand for tours is far outstripping the ability for admissions professionals to keep pace with delivery via traditional student-lead initiatives. Many universities report increases in tour volume anywhere from 33 percent to more than double over the past decade.

“Guidebook Tours in particular addresses the prospective student and their family, allowing them to experience a campus at any time by using a device they have with them all the time, the mobile phone,” said Jeff Lewis, co-founder and CEO of Guidebook. “Guidebook is proud to provide an easy to use platform for engaging the student at every stage of the student lifecycle, from initial exploration through graduation and beyond.”

How It Works

Guidebook Tours is designed to extend the reach of college admissions and allow them to capture the interest of prospective students regardless of when they want to visit campus. Guidebook Tours is particularly good for individuals and families who visit on weekends, holidays, or simply cannot make a scheduled tour. Some of the capabilities of Guidebook Tours include:

• Point-to-point directions: Drop the map, students don’t need to orient themselves with paper. Instead they can follow directions using the native GPS on their smartphone to guide them on the path administrators designate.
• Audio narration: With Guidebook Tours, universities can narrate the campus experience with custom-recorded audio. It plays automatically when a point of interest is reached. Use college ambassadors to record the stories that they share on an in person tour, include a welcome from the university president or enlist a professional voice actor to lend drama to the experience.
• Branding: Guidebook’s mobile app building platform allows administrators to create a completely branded experience for their prospective students to take on campus tours. Upload a logo, choose colors, add icons. It’s simple and easy.
• Capture student interest: Instead of letting self-guided tour students go untouched, the Guidebook platform captures student interest with a simple form so admissions can keep in touch.

Admissions professionals use Guidebook’s cloud-based mobile app building platform to create the tour in just a few easy steps. No coding or technical skills required. Once built, the administrator can immediately publish to both the Apple App Store and Google Play for access by prospective students at anytime from anywhere.

More Information

Guidebook Tours is available immediately. For more information on Guidebook pricing visit www.guidebook.com/pricing. In addition, to hear how universities are using these types of products to extend the reach of admissions, listen to Guidebook’s recent webinar here.

Other Uses

Guidebook Tours can also be used for corporate campus tours, walking tours of cities and historic sites, scavenger hunts and much more. Try Guidebook for free at www.guidebook.com.

About Guidebook

Guidebook has been making it easy for people to create mobile guides for their organizations since 2011. The world’s most admired companies use Guidebook. So do 80% out of the top colleges in the United States. Guidebook is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Raleigh, North Carolina, London, England and Seoul, South Korea. The company is backed by MHS Capital and Mosaic Ventures. Learn more at www.guidebook.com and follow us at @guidebook. For photos and logos visit www.guidebook.com/press.