5 Practical Ways a Tourism App Can Help You Tell Your Destination's Story
- Andrew Applebaum
- Apr 28
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 3
You have a place full of character, but how do you make sure people truly feel it? If you are a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) or a Business Improvement Area (BIA) that is short on time and budget, yet expected to deliver big impact, you are not alone. The good news is that you do not need a massive media team or a brand-new website to start telling compelling stories.
A tourism app can help you do more with less. It is a simple and effective way to connect visitors with what makes your destination unique, whether they are standing at a historic site or scrolling from their couch.
Here's five practical ways you can start telling your destination's story using digital tools you may already have access to.
1. Add Audio Tours That Sound Like Locals
Let us be honest; text on a plaque or sign can only do so much to capture a place's atmosphere. A familiar, human voice? That sticks with people. Audio tours embedded in a tourism app offer a powerful, accessible way to convey authentic local flavor.
With an app like Driftscape, you can:
Upload short voice clips from residents, local historians, or community guides.
Share fun facts, personal stories, or beloved local legends.
Give visitors the option to listen while they explore hands-free.
Pro Tip: Try recording short clips in different styles (for example friendly, dramatic, or documentary-style) to see what resonates most with your visitors. Do not worry about professional gear; a modern cell phone often captures decent, authentic audio.
2. Use Unique Photography to Showcase the Unexpected
You do not need an expensive drone or a design degree to create compelling visuals. Use photography to capture what people would miss without your guidance, effectively showcasing your destination's uniqueness and driving engagement.
Focus on snapping details that tell a deeper story:
Before-and-after shots of a heritage building's restoration.
Close-ups of a mural's hidden details or rarely-seen historic signs.
The pattern on a historic tile floor inside a shop or hallway.
The view from a community bench, lookout point, or rooftop.
Seasonal moments: the first bloom of spring outside a cafe or pumpkins lined up in front of a Main Street shop.
Public details most people miss: unique manhole covers, lamppost designs, or vintage mailboxes.
This approach helps visitors see your destination the way locals do, turning a quick visit into a memorable, immersive experience.
3. Map Stories to Real Places to Boost Local Business
The best stories happen in real places. A map-based tourism app lets you pin those significant moments, history, and community culture directly onto a live, interactive map. When you weave in stops at local shops or restaurants, it becomes a dual strategy: a way to boost business while telling a richer story.
Use the map function to:
Add a stop at a 100-year-old bakery and share its history.
Highlight the exact site of a historic local event.
Build a guided route that brings your community’s culture and heritage forward.
Example: Evergreen Brickworks utilized Driftscape to create a five-stop “Sustainable Technology” tour. They added photos, diagrams, narration, and video at each stop, showcasing their high and low-tech sustainability practices. This approach helped them tell a multi-layered story, boosting local engagement and generating over 1,500 tour views.
4. Build Themed Tours Around Visitor Interests
Not every tour needs to follow a chronological timeline. Some of the most successful self-guided tours are built around shared interests or specific topics that attract visitors to your destination.
Creating themed tours is all about connecting people to a place through a shared lens. Think about what your target audience cares about:
“Women Who Shaped Our City”
“Taste of the Neighbourhood: A Culinary Walking Tour”
“Murals, Markets, and Moments of Public Art”
Key Takeaway: Themed self-guided tours leverage a tourism app's map features to provide curated, high-value content that matches specific visitor demographics and interests, increasing both time spent and satisfaction.
5. Let Local Businesses Add Their Authentic Voice
People love hearing from actual people, not generic programs or institutional voices. Empower your small businesses, cultural organizations, and community groups to share their stories directly through the app.
This approach adds authenticity and helps create a strong sense of community:
A shopkeeper’s personal memory from 20 years ago.
A restaurant owner’s food philosophy and local ingredient sourcing.
A mini-feature on what to see or do nearby their location.
It is real, it is human—and it naturally turns curious visitors into loyal fans of your destination.
Start Small, Then Scale Your Digital Storytelling
Worried about the time commitment? You can easily start small with a pilot tour featuring just 3–5 points of interest. Add a compelling photo, a few lines of text, and maybe one audio clip. You can always build and expand your content from there.
Need a starting point? Ask your volunteers and business owners what story they love telling visitors, and use a map-based tourism app to connect that story with 1–2 more stops to create a great initial tour.
See What Works with Real-Time Data
One of the great advantages of a modern tourism app is the ability to leverage visitor engagement analytics. Apps like Driftscape provide real-time data on what is clicked, what content is listened to, and how long people are engaging. This means you can continually refine your destination's story, replacing content that falls flat with what you know visitors love.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Using a Tourism App for Storytelling
Q: How does a tourism app differ from just posting stories on a website?
A: A tourism app is fundamentally different because it is location-aware. It uses GPS to trigger content (audio, text, photos) when a visitor is physically near a point of interest, creating an immersive, real-time experience that a standard website cannot replicate. This "in-the-moment" delivery enhances engagement significantly.
Q: What kind of stories are most effective in a tourism app?
A: The most effective stories are short, focused, and location-specific. They should offer an insight that a visitor would not get on their own, such as personal anecdotes, historical "secrets," or the cultural significance of a building. Audio clips from locals perform exceptionally well in conveying authenticity.
Q: Can a small DMO team manage the content for a tourism app?
A: Yes. Modern tourism apps are designed to be user-friendly, allowing small teams to upload and manage content easily without coding knowledge. You can start with a small, high-impact tour of 3–5 points and gradually add more content as time and resources allow.
Q: How can an app boost local business or economic impact?
A: You can embed local businesses directly into your self-guided tours as points of interest. By telling the story of a shop, restaurant, or market, you provide a compelling reason for visitors to stop, browse, and spend money, directly boosting the local economic impact of your smart tourism efforts.
Q: How do I measure the success of my digital storytelling efforts?
A: Success is measured through the app's built-in engagement analytics. Key metrics include the number of tour views, how many points of interest were accessed, content playback time (especially for audio), and user-generated feedback. This data helps DMOs and BIAs refine their content strategy over time.
Final Thought: You Don’t Need Big Tools to Tell a Big Story
Your destination already has a powerful story. A tourism app simply provides the platform to help people hear it, feel it, and share it. If this sounds like a solution for your town, you are not alone. Plenty of small teams are finding success in smart tourism by starting small and building their digital stories over time.
Here are some DMO and BIA case studies for further exploration.
Book a demo at https://www.driftscape.com/marcia-nykamp-product-demo
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