11 Reasons Taking A Virtual Trip Will Enhance Your Future Travels

As an intrepid traveler who’s visited greater than 70 international locations and has been touring full-time for the previous decade, I’ve needed to get artistic throughout lockdown to satiate my wanderlust. Thank goodness I discovered Heygo.com!

Heygo’s free virtual tours are dwell, by no means recorded, and led by enthusiastic English-speaking native guides who have interaction in real-time with members from all through the world. Members are inspired to ask questions and make feedback via a chat function that pops up on guides’ digital camera screens, permitting for real-time conversations between the digital vacationers and the guides.

I lately took a Mary, Queen of Scots tour of Edinburgh with Paul, a previously homeless man educated as a information by a non-profit group known as Invisible Cities. Paul was greater than educated: He’s an entertaining storyteller with an ideal intuition for making historical past each related and irreverent. His tour is a mash-up of anecdotes, folklore, tradition, geology, present occasions, journey suggestions, and fantasy debunking.

Professional Tip: Heygo excursions are typically 45 minutes, however generally guides pop on early or keep late to talk. That’s the most effective time to construct a rapport with a information in a vacation spot you’ll be visiting. Leaving evaluations is one other nice rapport-builder, because the guides typically learn every evaluate.

Throughout one other expertise, I “joined” Meteja, knowledgeable tour supervisor with 30 years of expertise within the journey business, as she navigated Ljubljana’s farmers market. I realized about Slovenian culinary tradition, picked up some journey suggestions, and tried to be taught a number of Slovenian phrases.

Professional Tip: Whereas excursions are free, suggestions are inspired. The guides work onerous, holding a clipped tempo to cowl a whole lot of floor. Moreover, suggestions assist help the location, as there isn’t any membership value to affix Heygo. I like supporting native entrepreneurial guides, particularly following the pandemic once they have been hit onerous.

Excursions occur across the clock 24/7, so at any random time, it’s doable to select from half a dozen or so excursions. Whereas checking the location for a future tour, I used to be intrigued by an providing known as Funerals in Ghana: The Fantasy Coffin Crave and joined on the spot. It was a go searching a workshop the place coffins are carved into every little thing from automobiles to bugs to books — something that displays the deceased’s hobbies and pursuits. Acquired me reflecting: I believe I’d wish to be buried in a large wood passport!

Professional Tip: Heygo caps the variety of digital vacationers on a particular tour to maintain the expertise extra interactive and private, so it’s greatest to ebook a tour beforehand on the location’s calendar.

In lower than a 12 months, Heygo has grown to supply hundreds of free digital excursions in lots of of nations. Right here’s how I plan to make use of Heygo to encourage my future non-virtual journeys: