Guide for Those Planning to Purchase or Rent
Audio Guide Gdansk – City audio guide not only for tourists
Over the past 10 years, tour guide systems have become a standard for serving tourists by travel agencies, museums, and individual guides. However, not every guide or tour operator realizes that a purchased tour guide system may not necessarily be suitable for use in all countries where they send tours.
Unfortunately, globally there are not many universal license-free frequency ranges. It also often happens that permissible ranges change, either due to security policies (e.g., in the USA after 9/11/2001) or due to the allocation of the range for other services (e.g., LTE telephony).
Is there a solution that will satisfy everyone?
Unfortunately, most popular tour guide system models are produced in one of 2 or 3 lower UHF ranges, such as 863-865 MHz for Europe or 794-806 MHz for most Asian countries. For travel agencies sending their tours outside Europe, this creates problems related to duplicating existing tour guide systems, and thus higher costs. Even if tours to Asia mainly take place in the autumn-winter season and European tours in the spring-summer season, it was still necessary to purchase 2 sets with different frequencies.
As of today (and so far, there is no indication that anything will change in this regard), the only universal worldwide license-free range is 2.4 GHz (which is de facto 100 MHz, a vast range for current modern technology).
It might seem that a tour guide system operating in the 2.4 GHz band is an ideal solution for a tour operator sending tourists to various corners of the world.
Unfortunately, until now, digital 2.4 GHz systems have not been very popular among guides and travel agencies. This is not so much due to a higher cost compared to traditional models, but because of a much shorter range. For example, the range of digital Okayo models such as DGT-2400 or WT-600 is only 30-40 meters, which is a serious drawback compared to over 100 meters of the popular Okayo WT-300 (an analog model in the 863-865MHz frequency).
New model, a major breakthrough… mGuide DLR-01
The situation changed this year with the reactivation of the mGuide brand (MEXPO’s own brand, a leading distributor of tour guide and audio guide equipment in Europe) and a new digital tour guide system model – mGuide DLR-01 (Digital Long Range).
DLR offers over 150 meters of range, which more than satisfies the needs of the most demanding users. Additionally, mGuide DLR is equipped with a highly practical full-duplex 2-way communication capability between 2 transmitters operating on the same channel, allowing two tour leaders or a tour leader and a guide to simultaneously supplement their speech to the group, and also enrich it with background music.
