THE current hearings into Britain’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic have brought back stark memories of the fear, heartache and despair that gripped the nation. When lockdown put our lives on hold, we cherished our former freedom. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

But as we battened down the hatches and hunkered down at home, unaware how long we would have to remain indoors, apart from our hour of socially isolated exercise, there was a light in the darkness for those starved of travel. Virtual tours led online by local guides offered a window on the world.

Heading a small field was a small British start-up called Virtualtrips, which later changed its name to Heygo. Within a short space of time, the platform attracted thousands of regular users by offering free-to-join tours in real time with live chat, led by a growing number of friendly expert guides.

But with Heygo’s growth eventually came big money investment and the need to keep investors happy. The streamer’s business model relied on voluntary tips made to guides at the end of tours, with the company taking 40%. As lockdown eased, and normal life returned, revenue began to dry up.

Heygo closed on April 11 this year but investors weren’t the only casualties. Over two years, the platform had attracted a growing online community with more than 10,000 members of its Facebook group, regularly chatting, sharing ‘postcard’ screenshots from their tours and supporting each other.

Read more: Virtual travels in the year of Covid

It was an unexpected success. People starved of contact during lockdown were hungry for company, and there was a social media explosion. Then, as we started to travel for real again, many of those who encountered each other online started to meet up in real life, including virtual voyagers and guides.

It is a community, says Yorkshire tour guide John Wright, that you cannot put a value on. The interaction it allowed during troubled times was – and continues to be – “priceless”.

John is the driving force behind new website Together Virtually – Togethervirtually.com – an online tour streamer that has risen from the ashes of Heygo, funded and run by a group of the former platform’s guides and already starting to make a name for itself by carrying on the good work that began during lockdown.

“A while back I was doing a presentation to local tourism people and I asked people to send me some thoughts of what live streamed tours meant to them during the pandemic,” he says. “What came through, I couldn’t use because it just was too raw. It was so honest.

“What people had been going through – the loss of partners, people being diagnosed with life-limiting or terminal illnesses and not being able to comfort each other – was terrible but they had come to find us as a way of finding peace and happiness in an otherwise tumultuous time of life.

“You don’t realise that when you’re walking along the street, talking into a microphone, with your camera on a gimbal, you are giving somebody a space where those pressures can fall away perhaps for half an hour or an hour. They don’t go away, of course, but you can be somewhere else just for a while.

“That, for us, is a tremendous privilege. You can’t put a value on that. It’s priceless.”

So it was that when Heygo collapsed, John and a core group of guides immediately started looking for ways to carry on, both to protect their own livelihoods and to preserve the community spirit that the users of the platform had engendered. You can read about the evolution of the new website, which launches on Friday December 22 here.

“I and others felt a huge sense of responsibility because we had been fostering a community that gave people a sense of wellbeing and belonging,” he explains. “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.”

John and fellow guides started running new tours on platforms including Youtube, Facebook and Zoom, attracting audiences who had first discovered them in the Heygo era, and word got around. A regular newsletter was started, a shared tour calendar put online, and even before the new website launched, more than 5,000 people had already joined the Together Virtually Facebook group.

A browse through posts on the page show that members of the community are still supporting each other through tough times, offering advice and encouragement, and backing each others’ charitable endeavours. It’s no exaggeration to say that lifelong friendships have been formed in recent years.

“It’s the together bit that’s the important bit of what we are doing,” reasons John. “Compared to an awful lot of digital online stuff, this is not a solitary pursuit, it’s a communal activity and the sense of belonging is at the heart of it. That’s what really matters to people.

“The tours are an experience but it’s talking about the tours, and the talking together that is the end product. We supply what the conversation might be about but it’s the conversation that will revitalise a lot of people whose social connectivity has fallen below the level they’re happy with.

“It’s the being together; doing something together; having a relationship; talking about it afterwards and sharing. It just so happens that it’s travel here but it could be almost any subject. It’s how we can enable people to connect in this era often of social isolation, of digital isolation. This is a coming together of people – that’s the value of it.”

Read more: How plans for the new website evolved

Mutual support has ramped up as the world has suffered the shockwaves of conflict in Ukraine and Israel, and not just in the form of kind words. Anna Levina, a guide in Russia, fled with her family after the outbreak of war and found a new home in Israel. Her peace, of course, was not to last long.

Anna Levina

Guides, supported by members of the community, got together to help the family move again, this time temporarily to the safe haven of the Netherlands, where she now runs both livestream tours, and ‘as live’ highlights recorded during her previous visits to landmarks in Russia and Israel.

A thank you to Anna, by the way, for letting me include her story.

Anna took us to The Spilled Blood Cathedral in St Petersburg

“The world has changed dramatically since we started planning our own future, especially with the events in Ukraine and Israel,” says John. “And it is heartening to see the support guides working in those areas have received from our community.

“In years to come, I think that what is happening in the Middle East will come to be regarded as a turning point in the same way as the pulling down of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre. Certain events cause such shockwaves that nothing is ever the same afterwards. 

“We’ve had guides forced to relocate because of the conflicts, people who have had to move entire families. We know people who have relatives trapped in war zones. It is hard even to start to imagine what they are feeling. The scenes we see nightly on television are terrible.

“But the nature of having a global community is that things which at one time may have seemed distant, and just seen on a news bulletin, might now involve a friendly face you have come to care about. That gives you a greater insight into what is happening. The world becomes a smaller place.”

Even before the current conflicts, live streamed tours offered virtual voyagers the opportunity to experience other cultures, beliefs and communities, helping to foster a greater understanding of the world. And certainly, a little bit of peace, love and understanding is what we all need right now.

Togethervirtually.com launches tomorrow, Friday December 22, with former Heygo favourites including Anna Levina, Stephan van der Meer,  Lesley Hammam, Ian Braisby, Paul Stewart, New York duo Patrick Wetzel and Aaron Kaburick, John Wright and more.

Read more: Guides to launch new site with Christmas specials