Walking Tour – Interactive web solution to digitise sightseeing

01 The Challenge

The Walking Tour team approached Altamira with a clear vision: a web platform where tourists could access curated and immersive walking tours and guides could monetise their expertise globally.

The traditional model – book a guide, follow a group, stick to a fixed time – was outdated. Yet, existing digital tour apps were far from perfect. They lacked content quality, suffered from poor UX, and offered no real opportunity for tour creators to grow a business.

From the start, the Walking Tour team was highly engaged in the process. They had validated demand in their local market and drafted the core value pillars: availability (on-demand access in any language), individuality (users choose what they want to see), and immersion (video, imagery, even AR). What they needed was a zero headache technology partner to turn this concept into a scalable, content-rich platform.

The first phase began with collaborative workshops. Our team worked closely with Walking Tour’s team to align on product logic, user roles, and must-have features. As we progressed to development, we tackled three parallel goals:

• Build an admin portal for tour management

• Enable a smooth experience for tourists

• Design a scalable, cloud-based architecture that could support international growth

But no pathbreaking project comes without challenges. The team had to solve complex problems, such as synchronising media-rich content with precise geolocation triggers and designing multilingual support across both UI and tour content.

Thanks to our deep experience in travel tech and content platforms, we proactively tackled each challenge by crafting intuitive admin flows, optimising for performance on AWS, and refining content delivery for spotty mobile connections.

02 The Solution

Altamira developed a fully functional web application using PHP (Yii2), CSS, HTML, and modern cloud infrastructure (AWS, Firebase), with Mapbox integration for dynamic, interactive maps. The platform’s feature set was designed to serve two core audiences: tourists and content creators.

Key features included:

• Admin panel authorisation and roles – Secure logins, differentiated access for guides, editors, and administrators.

• Localisation engine – Support for multilingual tour content and dynamic language switching.

• Content vocabulary module – A centralised library for tour-related terminology to ensure consistency across languages.

• Interactive map navigation – Mapbox-powered interactive maps

• User notification system – In-app alerts and reminders to guide users through their journey.

Every feature was designed with simplicity for users and scalability for the business in mind.

03 The Result

The final product delivered on the original vision: a digital platform that gives control back to both tourists and tour creators.

• The Admin Panel allowed guides to independently build, manage, and sell digital tours, turning their knowledge into a recurring revenue stream.

• Localisation tools laid the foundation for global expansion.

• The interactive map and rich multimedia content provided tourists with an engaging, location-aware experience that felt personal and immersive.

• A reliable backend infrastructure positioned Walking Tour to expand into new cities and onboard cultural institutions and independent guides with ease.

With the platform in place, Walking Tour proved their core belief: travellers crave flexibility and quality when exploring new places and local guides deserve modern tools to share their expertise and grow their business.