Le Web 2012 – Where does Tourism Radio® fit in?

Hummba's parent company, Tourism Radio, was this year invited to Paris, France, to take part in the premier internet and blogging expo in the world, Le Web.

According to Le Web’s organisers, more than 50 billion electronic devices will be connected to the internet by the year 2020. If that number is too staggering to comprehend, try look at it from your own perspective: How many devices do you own that are connected to the web? Your Android smartphone? Your iPad? Your television? Possibly even your fridge? It’s only logical that your vehicle will follow suit, and that’s where Tourism Radio and French auto giant Renault come in.

Tourism Radio in the Renault R-Link

At Le Web 2012, we officially launched the Renault R-Link Tourism Radio audio travel guide application. The R-Link is Renault’s fully integrated multimedia system, and will be available in selected Renault models from 2013. Tourism Radio is one of the first applications that will be available for download on the system.

Le Web 2012 follows the theme The Internet of Things, and organisers say it’s all about “melding the physical world and the virtual world.” Here at Tourism Radio, we can’t agree more. Our partnership with Renault ensures that drivers will soon be able to explore cities all over the world from the comfort of their vehicles. We launched the R-Link app with a comprehensive guide to Paris (in English, French and German). Plans to expand our content base to other European centres are already on the cards and these are expected to roll out in the first quarter of 2013.

Tourism Radio in the Renault R-Link

If you’re at Le Web, be sure to head over to the Renault stand and give the Tourism Radio app a spin. If however you’ve missed the expo, don’t worry, you can get all the info you need from our website: http://www.tourismradio.info.

Location-based travel guides – why should you be using them?

Here at Hummba, we’ve long said that the days of carrying around a bulky travel guide book are numbered. What was once a useful tool (before the advent of the smartphone), is now becoming nothing more than a nuisance when travelling abroad. The travel information contained in guide books is notoriously outdated, and of course they can be quite pricey. Adding to that, unless you buy a ‘pocket version’, they can also be quite heavy and bothersome to lug around from one place to the next.

According to the Pew Research Center in Washington, more than 46% of Americans owned a smartphone in February, 2012. This represents an increase of 11% when compared to the numbers from May, 2011 (source). People are beginning to explore the capabilities of their mobile phones, as well as rely on the devices to carry out everyday tasks, such as check train timetables or read restaurant reviews. The emergence of third party applications is also adding fuel to this fire, showing smartphone owners the sheer amount of information they can easily access at the touch of a few buttons.

Enter Hummba, the intelligent travel guide for your mobile phone. Our intelligent audio guides use mobile GPS technology to provide smartphone users with accurate travel information that is relevant to where they are in the world. For example, you can find up-to-date information about the nearest place to grab a bite for lunch, while you’re standing on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. With Hummba, you’ll have access to an unprecedented amount of audio and text travel content, right there on your mobile phone.

We offer two ways to get the travel information you need. Firstly, you can download the Hummba application to your iPhone or Android, free of charge. You can then search for paid or free guides to your favourite travel destinations and download them through the app itself. Download multiple guides and use the Hummba app to get the most of your travels.

If however you’re looking to download a guide to a single travel destination, then you can visit the iTunes Store or Android Marketplace and search for the Tourism Radio standalone guides as well. Search for the Tourism Radio New York City Guide, for example, if you’re looking to find out more about the Big Apple.

Location-based travel guides for the mobile phone take all the legwork out for getting travel information when you need it most. Visit hummba.com for more information on the Hummba application, or head straight for the Hummba guide store and start searching for guides.

Hummba launches new travel guide store, featuring dozens of free and paid audio travel guides

More frequent visitors to hummba.com will by now have realised that our website recently underwent a facelift. Along with some fancy new graphics and a few improvements to the site’s user-friendly design, we’ve also put together an all-new Hummba travel guide store.

Through the store, you’ll have easy access to our comprehensive city travel guides. These feature hours of audio content that plays when you approach specific places, seamlessly blended with up-to-date travel information provided by Frommer’s® Unlimited. Frommer’s has been a trusted source of travel information for more than 50 years, and they have partnered with Hummba’s parent company, Tourism Radio®, to produce what we believe will be the next generation of mobile travel guides.

The Hummba travel guide store features guides to popular tourist destinations across the globe, like New York City, Paris and London, as well as dozens of other cities. Each guide contains hundreds of points of interest, with detailed information about well-known tourist attractions, monuments, museums, restaurants, clubs and also accommodation facilities. You can see all of the points of interest online, before you buy the guide, which means you know exactly what you’re paying for when you download the guide onto your mobile phone.

The guides will be free to download until the 1st of May, after which they will range in price from US$0.99 to US$4.99, depending on the amount of travel content they contain. There is also a selection of free travel guides, known as lite guides, which you can download to your mobile at no charge. The only difference between the free guides and the paid guides is the amount of travel content available. That way you can test out our city guides without having to commit to making a payment first. If you like what you see, then buy the full city guide and experience the guide to the fullest.

For more information about Hummba and our exciting range of free and paid city guides, visit hummba.com, or head over to the travel guide store directly. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to get all the information you need about the Hummba travel guide store as it happens.