Rideau Rover: one amphibious bus, nine languages

The challenge

Rideau Rover tours drive through downtown Ottawa and then splash into the Ottawa River. Passengers arrive from all over the world, but a live guide can only speak one language at a time, and a bilingual city means even the “default” tour needs both English and French.

The tour also moves between road and water, through areas with patchy coverage, for well over an hour. Commentary had to keep pace with the vehicle without anyone pressing play.

The solution

Rideau Rover built a GPS audio app: each stop is a geofence with a direction cone, and when the vehicle reaches it the right commentary plays on every passenger's phone in the language they chose. Audio runs in the background with the screen locked, and upcoming stops are downloaded ahead of time.

That system is the foundation of TourChorus. Rideau Rover now runs on the TourChorus platform as our first operator and live demo, and the same engine, dashboard and branded app are available to every operator.

• • Routes and stops managed on a map, with departure times per stop
• • Commentary in English, French, Spanish, Ukrainian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Portuguese
• • Push notifications and in-app announcements for riders
• • Monthly reporting on riders and languages

The results

Every passenger hears the full story of the city in their own language, without extra guides or hardware on board. International visitors no longer sit through commentary they can't follow, and the team updates stops from the dashboard instead of re-recording a PA track.