VisGo; Egyptian Travel App Integrates Tech With Story-Telling To Unveil the Middle East
As Robbie Robertson so accurately puts it “you don’t stumble upon your heritage. It’s
there, just waiting to be explored and shared.” And this is exactly what drove VisGo co-founders
Mohamed Ahmed, Ahmed Raafat, Mohamed Aly, and Seif-El-Din Fawzy to create VisGo. But, in
order to preserve this heritage effectively, they were determined to make the process both
entertaining and informative at the same time.
This is when they thought of the idea of a travel-guide mobile app. However, after
realizing that most ways of exploring Egypt and other regional countries were traditional,
inconvenient, and not user-friendly, they decided to think differently. They were determined to
create an experience for their users that was both entertaining and informative. To do this,
they integrated both advanced technology, and the art of story-telling, to transport the listener
to the time and place of any destination. They plan to release 15 places in Egypt, including the Cairo
Citadel, the Giza Pyramids, the Karnak Temple in Luxor, Abu Simbel in Aswan, and Kite Bay in
Alexandria. Some of their places aren’t even touristic in a conventional sense, such as the island
of Zamalek, or Downtown Cairo. They are also working on covering places in Jordan, Lebanon,
and Saudi Arabia, eventually extending to all places in the Middle East.
VisGo produces GPS-guided immersive audio tours that users can take on their own
smartphone. They blend elements of augmented reality, sound effects, background music, narration, and a cinematic production, to ultimately create transformative content for their
users. The end goal, as Ahmed co-founder says, is to make the listener “feel like they are
walking around in a movie, like they are a part of the location.” The app adopts innovative
technology, such as interactive GPS based maps, so that the narrator of the audio guide and the
listener are in sync.
Technology is one way VisGo connects the listener to their surroundings. The other crucial
way is to translate the information through a story. VisGo partners with creative writers and
skilled storytellers to bring a story to life. They focus on making the script of the story engaging,
by integrating the information with the style of writing a story. By focusing on the experience of
the user as a whole rather than just the informative bit, the app gives its listeners a chance to
go through history and connect with their roots.
Generations of people have documented their history to ensure that their stories are
told. The app preserves these stories by ensuring that they are interesting enough to be heard.
Our history and traditions offer us an awareness about ourselves more than anything else. By
focusing on the experience of its users, VisGo is successful in preserving a heritage that is crucial
to our own understanding of who we are, and where we came from.
