Visual Travel Tours Introduces Mobile QuietGuides For The Hearing Impaired

Scroll as You Stroll, Travel with Multimedia Guided Tours

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Visual Travel Tours (VTT) www.VisualTravelTours.com today unveiled QuietGuides, a new line of multimedia travel guides with script and imagery for the hearing impaired and deaf. VTT is the first online source for professional multimedia tours purposely created for viewing via smartphones (including the iPhone 3G S), cell phones, PDAs, mobile video players and desk/laptops.

“Text and photos are formatted for viewing on mobile devices for an easy, lightweight alternative to heavy, out of date guidebooks.”

VTT QuietGuides help deaf and hearing impaired travelers pre-plan adventures, pick the best places to visit - from Main Street to Mongolia - and access travel information on the go. Over 115 QuietGuides are currently available, with new releases every month.

“The QuietGuides are multimedia guidebooks that elevate the on-location experience for special needs travelers,” said Marie Profant, President and Founder of VTT. “Text and photos are formatted for viewing on mobile devices for an easy, lightweight alternative to heavy, out of date guidebooks.”

Visual Travel Tours optimizes QuietGuide text and image-sharing interfaces for seamless, multiplatform delivery and the same high-quality experience as tours with audio soundtracks. Unlike video files, the average QuietGuide file size is under 4mb, making them a good option for people with limited mobile storage.

How it works:

Travelers use a credit card to purchase and download tours from https://www.VisualTravelTours.com anywhere there is Internet access. Once loaded onto a mobile device, QuietGuides work without Internet service, so hearing impaired travelers can “stroll and scroll,” even while underground or in the middle of an Egyptian pyramid.

In addition to tours, VTT offers instant access to web-based travel advice from local experts, and convenient links to travel related services on the Internet; maps, weather, currency conversion, products and reservations.

New QuietGuide tours are planned for release each week. Each tour describes the ‘best of’ a location using an array of images and commentary. Content is created by writers with experience in a region and tours are professionally produced by VTT.

About Visual Travel Tours

VTT’s mission is to enrich a traveler’s experience by using evolving technology, providing more than traditional audio walking tours, and offering local experts opportunities to share their expertise and collect royalties. Travel writing expert and Executive Editor Gordon Burgett has spent the past several months communicating with guides and writers around the world, ushering them through the company’s online manual, “Provider Island,” and its unique tour submission process. Mr. Burgett is joined by a team of seasoned experts, from publishers to audio/video producers. The parent company, URaTrip® LLC, is based in Santa Barbara and led by Marie Profant, a long-time manager of leading-edge systems. The company is offering opportunities for video producers to audition their work with clips of world-wide destinations. The best will be invited to become VTT producers.

For more information, please visit www.VisualTravelTours.com.

Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6007158&lang=en