LIVE stream tour guides who banded together after the collapse of online travel trip platform Heygo have announced the launch date of their new website, which will offer a ‘one-stop shop’ for virtual voyagers worldwide.

Togethervirtually.com will open officially for business on Friday December 22, supported by many of Heygo’s most popular personalities and offering an easy user-friendly portal for armchair travellers who want to discover the world.

Saint Francis Basilica in Assisi

It has been running quietly in the background for testing over several weeks, already offering suitably seasonal special visits to medieval Assisi – known as ‘the city of cribs’ for its many nativity scenes – the Milan Duomo Christmas markets, and a Viennese winter wonderland.

Other trips this weekend include the Christmas Markets of imperial Vienna, the holiday lights in Maryland’s National Harbor, the illuminations in Italy’s Bergamo, and a visit to Britain’s Bournemouth.

Anna Levina is one of many guides

Users of the free-to-subscribe site will be offered a range of tours in the company of guides such as Lesley Hammam, Anna Levina, Ian Braisby, Paul Stewart, New York duo Patrick Wetzel and Aaron Kaburick, John Wright and many more.

Live walking tours and presentations head the attractions, alongside ‘as live’ recorded tours and YouTube premieres, most of which remain free to join, although tipping will continue to be encouraged to support the guides.

Some tours will be accessible for a small fee, and a small number will have to be pre-booked to ensure attendance. The new site will also enable users to browse TV-style listings (‘Watch TV’ cheekily stands for Watch Together Virtually) and drop in to whatever might be live – or plan ahead using a calendar.

Unlike Heygo’s operation, where guides only saw 60% of tips, with the rest going to the now defunct company, the Together Virtually tour leaders will receive 100% of tips, subject only to any handling fee imposed by users’ money transfer services.

The site will initially be funded by the guides who will pay a subscription to have their tours included, with all the marketing opportunities that result, including a website presence, social media, newsletters, easy access and tipping.

Tours will offer the interactive live chat facility requested by virtual voyagers who took to online travel after discovering livestream tours during pandemic lockdown, but the ability to snap ‘postcard’ pictures at the press of a button will not be immediately available.

Planning for the site has been underway for some five months, although founder John Wright, the Yorkshire tour guide who also heads up his own All Points North business, reveals that discussions opened on the day Heygo announced its closure.

“We were only given eleven days notice of Heygo’s closure,” recalls John. “Guides had spent two years with the platform, during which we had been very much encouraged to move our guided tours online and get more and more invested in that.

“So when the news came that in just a few days all that was going to disappear, it was a huge issue for many of us. People’s livelihoods were at stake. We also felt a huge sense of responsibility to the Voyagers we’d met on our tours.

“We had been fostering a community that gave people a sense of wellbeing and belonging. There were people who weren’t actively social because of lockdown, because of shielding, or simply they were at an age where they couldn’t get out and about.

“We were very reluctant to see that community go. It seemed something of immense value but how to keep that going wasn’t entirely clear, other than ‘we need to try something’. The feeling among the guides was that we should carry on.

“Our thinking was ‘Well, you might be stopping – but we’re not!’ I started making phone calls on the very first day. We didn’t know what continuation looked like but the desire among the guides to continue livestream tours was clear from day one.”

After hearing hints that Heygo might be be touted for sale, John had, in fact, earlier had some preliminary conversations with fellow guides about what they might do should the worst come to the worst – as indeed it did on April 11 this year.

“By the end of that first day it seemed to me that there were enough of us of the same mind to try something ourselves,” he says. “We gave ourselves the green light. We had some money to put in because our last Heygo tours had been very well supported.

“But what we needed wasn’t a product to put out there straight away. We needed to work out what we, as guides, wanted and, more importantly, what our audience wanted. Only then could we deliver something that would have a fighting chance of succeeding.

“That’s why it has taken us until now to launch the Together Virtually website. There’s been a lot of research and work to find that sweet spot between cost, functionality and the audience’s willingness to embrace new experiences.

“We have to be realistic and recognise that our audience tends to be a bit more mature, possibly not all tech-savvy, and aren’t necessarily all going to want to head off in a hugely different, innovative direction. We’ve had to calibrate those three factors.

“We didn’t have the money just to go to a web designer and say ‘This is what we want doing’ so it’s taken us longer to see what’s out there, take what bits we need, rebuild it Meccano style, and end up with something that works for the audience.

“This whole thing has been paid for by members of the guides collective. It was important to us that we weren’t in thrall to outside influences as we shaped the site. If something wasn’t working three months down the line, we could just say so and change it.

“That’s as opposed to working for someone, only to be told ‘It’s not working – you’re sacked’. We didn’t want to be in that position again. We wanted to hold the reins. There’s a lot to be said for being master of your own destiny.”

A live tour with interactive chat

Virtual voyagers will be able to join tours live on the new site, even though they may actually be hosted by Youtube or Facebook. Since Heygo’s collapse, users have often had to visit several sites to reach their destination.

“We wanted a one-stop shop,” explains John. “Look at the big successes of the last decade. They’ve been those who make things easy. It’s very easy to book accommodation with Airbnb; It’s very easy to a book a ride with Uber; booking.com makes it very easy to book a holiday.

A typical tour description

“If we could find a very easy way for people to find, follow and support our tours then there could be a broader audience as well. There’s an awful lot of live streaming out there, and a way of engaging and supporting activity may be attractive not just to us as tour guides but to others offering other streams.

“If we could get as much stuff in one place, and make it easy to find and view, then that surely would be the best way to reach audiences now and in the future.”

The site is complemented by the Facebook Virtually Together – Discover The World community page, which has already attracted more than 5,200 members.

Read more: More former Heygo guides join new collective