What is a tour guide system?
Tour guide systems provide audio reinforcement in in situations when a speaker’s voice must overcome distance and background noise (such as a factory tour).
Tour guide systems consist of a wireless transmitter with a microphone that broadcasts the voice of the tour leader or the interpreter to individual receivers with headphones or earbuds. The receivers are distributed to the group so that each person can hear the speaker at a personally comfortable level.
This not only allows speakers to save their voices, but also keeps listener attention from drifting away. In addition to providing support for tours, a tour guide system can satisfy ADA requirements for accommodating the hearing impaired at public meetings.
Multichannel tour guide systems add the capability to add an interpreter for tour members speaking another language, or to allow two-way communication between tour guides and groups.
Why should you rent a tour guide system?
Although there are benefits to buying your own system, many event planners prefer to rent a tour guide system. How do you know if renting is right for you?
Here are 3 benefits to renting a tour guide system for your next event.
1. Renting a tour guide system allows you to avoid the hidden costs of buying.
Although buying a tour guide system could provide a cost benefit to organizations that are planning multiple consecutive tours, keep in mind that there are hidden costs. Storage and maintenance costs are two such considerations.
The biggest hidden cost, however, is keeping your system up to date, whether by purchasing additional components or upgrading obsolete systems. In a world where new systems arrive every one or two years, this cost could be significant.
Renting a tour guide system bypasses these problems entirely, and guarantees a state of the art system any time you need it.
2. Renting lets you customize your tour guide system for each event.
Buying a tour guide system is much more costly if you have to continually augment your number of transmitters and receivers. Estimating the size of tours or other events one or two years in the future isn’t easy, and if you overestimate, you can easily spend too much.
Renting allows you to get the system that exactly fits the size of you audience and the number of interpreters and group leaders.
Of course if you do buy a system, it’s a simple matter to augment it with additional rental equipment as your events require them.
3. Renting a system allows you flexibility in scheduling events.
Scheduling consecutive events with a purchased system is easy (and could even be an argument for buying rather than renting.) But what happens when you need to run two tours or events at the same time? Even if you have enough gear to create two systems, how do you insure they’re compatible?
Renting enables you to skip the worry of overlapping events, even those at the same venue. Rental companies are experts at making sure you not only have the correct systems for each event, but also that they are compatible.
Renting tour guide systems is a sound solution
If you decide to rent a tour guide system, choose a rental company with expertise, great customer service, and a wide variety of gear to choose from. Call AudioLinks at 407-757-3326 today for a rental quote for your next event!
