The Audio Tour Buyer's Guide: Questions to Ask Before You Invest

You've decided your museum needs an audio tour. Maybe it's for a major exhibition. Maybe you're finally addressing interpretation for your permanent collection. Maybe a board member asked why you don't have "one of those apps like the big museums."

Whatever the catalyst, you're now evaluating options. And if you haven't done this before, you might not know what questions to ask.

This guide won't tell you which solution to choose. Every museum's needs are different. But it will help you ask the right questions—the ones that reveal whether a solution will actually work for your institution, or whether you'll discover the limitations after you've already committed.

Questions About Timeline

How long from starting to having something visitors can use?

Traditional agency production takes 12-24 weeks. Some modern platforms can have you live in days or weeks. The difference matters enormously if you're working toward an exhibition opening or trying to respond to a specific need.

Ask for specifics: not "it depends" but actual timelines from real customers. If they can't give you examples, that's information.

What's the timeline for adding a new stop or section?

Creating the initial tour is one thing. Adding content later is another. Some solutions require going back through the full production process. Others let you add content in hours.

Think about your actual use case: Will your collection change? Will you have temporary exhibitions? Will you want to expand coverage over time?

What happens when you need to make changes quickly?

A donor's name is mispronounced. A date is wrong. New research changes an attribution. How fast can you fix it?

If the answer involves re-engaging voice talent, booking studio time, and waiting weeks—factor that into your planning. If the answer is "you can fix it in five minutes"—verify that's actually true.

Questions About Updates and Maintenance

What does it cost to update existing content?

This is the question most buyers forget to ask—and the one that matters most for long-term satisfaction.

Get specific numbers. What does it cost to change one stop? What does it cost to update 20% of the tour? What's the minimum engagement for an update project?

We've seen update costs range from essentially free (for self-service platforms) to $1,500-$5,000 for a single stop (for traditional production). The difference in total cost of ownership over five years is enormous.

Who can make updates?

Can your staff make changes directly? Or do you need to go through the vendor, an agency, or a technical team?

Direct control means faster updates and lower costs. Vendor dependency means waiting for their availability and paying their rates.

How do you handle content that becomes outdated?

Ask what happens when research changes, objects are moved, or galleries are reorganized. Is there a process? A cost? A timeline?

The best answer is a system designed for change. The worst answer is "we'd need to scope that as a new project."

Questions About Languages

How many languages are available, and what does each cost?

Traditional production charges $10,000-$20,000 per additional language. Some modern platforms include multiple languages at no additional per-language cost.

The difference determines whether multilingual is realistic for your budget or permanently out of reach.

How is translation handled?

Machine translation? Professional human translation? Human review of machine translation?

Each approach has tradeoffs. Machine translation is fast and cheap but may miss nuance. Human translation is accurate but expensive and slow. The best approaches often combine both—machine translation with human review for quality.

Can you add languages later?

If you start with English and Spanish, can you add Mandarin next year without starting over? What's the process and cost?

Flexibility to expand matters if your community demographics change or if you discover unexpected demand.

Questions About Visitor Experience

What does the visitor experience actually look like?

Ask for demos. Better yet, ask for access to a live implementation you can try yourself. The sales demo is designed to impress; the actual visitor experience is what matters.

Pay attention to: How easy is it to start? How's the audio quality? How intuitive is navigation? Does it feel professional or clunky?

Is the experience linear or flexible?

Can visitors jump to any stop? Can they ask questions? Can they go deeper on topics that interest them?

Traditional audio tours are linear: Stop 1, Stop 2, Stop 3. Modern approaches may offer more flexibility. Match the solution to how your visitors actually move through your museum.

What happens when visitors have questions the tour doesn't cover?

This reveals a lot about the solution's sophistication. Does it just play pre-recorded content? Can it respond to visitor queries? Is there any interactivity?

Questions About Production

Who creates the content?

Some solutions are pure platforms—you provide all content. Some offer content creation services. Some use AI to help generate drafts from your materials.

Be honest about your capacity. If your curatorial staff doesn't have time to write scripts, a platform that requires you to provide finished content won't help.

What does the production process look like?

Walk through the actual workflow. Where does content come from? How is it refined? How is audio generated? Who reviews and approves?

Look for bottlenecks. If every change requires scheduling a recording session, that's a bottleneck. If approval processes are complex, that's a bottleneck.

How much of your staff's time will this require?

Get realistic estimates. Not just for initial setup, but for ongoing maintenance. Factor that time into your total cost calculation.

Questions About Cost

What's the total cost for year one?

Include everything: setup fees, production costs, platform fees, per-language costs, training, integration work. Get it all in one number.

What's the total cost for years two through five?

Ongoing platform fees, maintenance costs, update costs, additional content costs. Project it out.

The solution with the lowest year-one cost may have the highest five-year cost if updates are expensive or platform fees escalate.

What's included vs. what costs extra?

Languages? Updates? Support? Training? New features? Storage? Usage beyond certain thresholds?

Understand where the additional costs hide. "Unlimited" often has limits. "Included" often has exceptions.

How does pricing scale?

If you want to add more content, more languages, or more museums (for multi-site institutions), how does cost change?

Red Flags to Watch For

Vague answers about updates.

If they can't give you specific costs and timelines for making changes, assume changes will be expensive and slow.

Pressure to commit quickly.

Good solutions sell themselves. High-pressure tactics often indicate the solution won't hold up to careful evaluation.

Dismissing your concerns.

If you raise a concern and they minimize it rather than addressing it, that concern will become a problem later.

Everything is "custom."

Custom sounds premium but often means "we haven't figured this out yet" or "this will cost extra."

No clear answer on data ownership.

Who owns the content you create? What happens if you leave? Can you export your work? These matter more than you think.

The Decision Framework

After gathering answers, evaluate against your actual needs:

If timeline is critical (exhibition opening, board deadline): Prioritize solutions with fast production and minimal dependencies.

If budget is tight but ongoing: Look at total cost of ownership, not just initial cost. Cheap setup with expensive updates is a trap.

If multilingual matters: Verify language capabilities and costs. Don't assume—confirm.

If your content will change: Prioritize update flexibility. The tour you create today won't be the tour you need in three years.

If staff capacity is limited: Look for solutions that minimize ongoing time requirements, even if initial setup takes more effort.

If visitor experience is paramount: Test actual implementations, not just demos. Talk to museums using the solution about visitor feedback.

Making the Choice

No solution is perfect for every museum. The goal isn't to find the perfect option—it's to find the option whose limitations you can live with and whose strengths match your priorities.

Ask the questions. Get specific answers. Talk to references. Test the actual experience.

And remember: the best audio tour is one that actually gets created, launched, and maintained. A theoretically superior solution that never ships serves no one.

Your visitors are waiting.

‍