I'm Marius, co-founder and CEO of iWander. We're a London-based travel tech startup that I founded with my brother, Antoine (CTO), and this week we launched our iOS app, so this felt like the right moment to properly introduce ourselves to this community.
Why we built iWander:
Antoine (@antoine-nigond) and I grew up in an expat, nomadic family, so travel has been the backdrop of our whole lives. My previous startup was a platform for self-guided audio tours (and I wrote a great many of them myself) while Antoine was building fintech and spent his evenings dabbling with AI. When generative AI exploded, we realised the thing we'd always wanted to build was finally possible: a personal walking tour, on demand, for anyone, in any city.
Because here's the problem we kept running into: everyone agrees a great guided tour is the best way to discover a city, yet few travellers actually do them. Fixed start times, fixed routes, forty strangers moving at the slowest person's pace, and a price tag that excludes most independent travellers. There's no way to pause for a coffee, follow a side street that caught your eye, or quietly slip away at minute thirty.
What iWander does:
You type in any city (or just tap once, wherever you're standing), pick how long you want to walk, press play, and iWander builds a personal audio walking tour in about thirty seconds, narrated by a character guide yof your choice. Pause for a coffee, skip a section, take the long way home: the guide walks at your pace, not the other way round.
A few things under the hood we're proud of:
- 1,000+ cities, 9 languages, with tours tuned to the time of day, the weather, and what's actually open. - A 6.5-million-place curated stories layer, from the bakery open since 1822 to the café where Hemingway wrote. The two years we spent building this database and the storytelling engine on top of it is what turns a list of stops into an actual tour with a beginning, middle and end. - 60+ curated tours across 25 destinations, written and recorded by world-class local storytellers, because no algorithm can replace someone who knows a city street by street. - Ask anything: point your camera at a building or ask out loud, and get a location-aware answer. - In-app booking for the attractions, restaurants and events you discover along the way.
What we'd love from this community:
Here's the honest bit. For the past two years we've been heads-down on the B2B tech side, building the engine and working with enterprise partners. Now that the consumer app is live, it's the right time to build out the brand: our tribe, our social presence, our community of wanderers. And frankly, that's the part we need help with.
So if you're a creator, storyteller, marketer, community builder, or just someone who loves this space and wants to get involved and help us grow, please reach out. I'd love to talk.
And of course, try the app and tell me where it falls short. It's free to download with 30 free audio minutes on sign-up. If you want a live demo, drop a city + a theme + a duration in the comments (e.g. "90-minute food-and-history walk through Lisbon at sunset") and I'll share what iWander comes up with.
Thanks for sharing iWander and your story with the Travel Massive community.
First, it's fantastic to see your product finally launch since we met at our London Travel Massive and Travel Trends Social during WTM week last November. You guys have been keeping busy!
Me and @kckiwigirl tried iWander out in Melbourne, and this is the first AI generated city guide that makes me feel excited about this kind of tech. The UX is truly great... from the way it compiles a linear route and researches the web for stories and anecdotes to tell you in a story-based format.
Clearly an incredible amount of human effort has gone on to developing iWander, so hats off to you and Marius.
In terms of initial feedback — I would have liked to choose an Australian mascot for our tour guide. Perhaps a Wombat or Wallaby since we're in Australia? Maybe there's some more characters to unlock in the upgrade based on the country you are visiting.
Also, when is an Android version coming? And what are you planning next?
Thanks so much for the positive feedback and the comments! I love the fact that you've picked up that we've spent a huge amount of time refining the narrative - and not just stringing a bunch of POIs together in a route that makes sense. This has definitely been the biggest part of the development, so it's encouraging to see that people recognise this.
To answer your question re: the wombat/other avatars: yes, yes and yes! We want to really have fun with the avatars, generating dynimic avatars with local accents and features, allowing users to build their own avatars/guides, and also offering the ability to individual creators and human guides to create "digital twin" avatars so they can keep guiding customers digitally.
Android work is underway, and there are still plenty of exciting updates coming to the iOS app in the next few weeks.
But my priority now is to now grow our iWander tribe - both in terms of user adoption and team/contributors! If anyone has thoughts or would like to help out on this (especially social media), please reach out!
Global Travel & Tourism Communications Consultant, CM Communications
This is a great app! We also enjoyed trialling it in a more off-beat location outside a major city (Bacchus Marsh) and it gave some awesome intel. Look forward to checking it out in more places! I hope London is treating you well as summer comes to town :)
Thanks so much Casey, and love the fact that you stress-tested it in more off-the-beaten track locations! Our goal is for the guide to be able to tell you great stories anywhere in the world, whether it's a major location or completely off-grid. Still some work to do to really crack all off-grid places, but it's getting there! Please do keep sharing feedback with me
Congratulations to you and your brother for building this, it looks like a monumental amount of work has gone into getting to this stage and it looks fantastic!
Have you got a timeframe on when it will be on Google Play?
Thanks a lot, Nick! Android development is under way and we expect to have it ready later this summer. And still plenty of iterating on iOS that we are understanding more about how customers are using and interacting with the technology.
Would love to hear how it performs on some of your top destinations in Wales - maybe there's a way we can work together on this?
Thanks a lot Nathan! Just a quick question on this - would you rather have a human tour guide avatar rather than the animal characters?
We've experimented with both and intially wanted to launch with a duo-lingo style-guide approach to make the brand more memorable. However, I see huge potential to offer more realistic human guides, even working with guides to create digital twins. I'd be interested to learn if this would be more relevant for you?
I really enjoyed reading your story and the philosophy behind iWander. The combination of storytelling, local discovery, human curation, and AI is particularly interesting.
I run Soul Dreamers in Lisbon, a cultural immersion experience focused on hidden gems, storytelling, multicultural communities, gastronomy, street art, and live music. A large part of what we do revolves around helping people connect more deeply with places through stories and human encounters, so I found a lot of resonance with some of the ideas you’re exploring.
I’d love to try the app and perhaps exchange thoughts at some point on experience design, storytelling, AI, and the future of travel. I suspect there may be some interesting overlaps.
Congratulations again on the launch and wishing you and Antoine lots of success.
I'd be super interested to hear whether you think an experience like iWander would be complementary to what you offer at Soul Dreamers (e.g. before/after a Soul Dreamers experience), or whether you think there's no overlap between the two audiences.
Would love to discuss more once you've had a chance to try out the app!
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Hey Travel Massive fam 👋
I'm Marius, co-founder and CEO of iWander. We're a London-based travel tech startup that I founded with my brother, Antoine (CTO), and this week we launched our iOS app, so this felt like the right moment to properly introduce ourselves to this community.
Why we built iWander:
Antoine (@antoine-nigond) and I grew up in an expat, nomadic family, so travel has been the backdrop of our whole lives. My previous startup was a platform for self-guided audio tours (and I wrote a great many of them myself) while Antoine was building fintech and spent his evenings dabbling with AI. When generative AI exploded, we realised the thing we'd always wanted to build was finally possible: a personal walking tour, on demand, for anyone, in any city.
Because here's the problem we kept running into: everyone agrees a great guided tour is the best way to discover a city, yet few travellers actually do them. Fixed start times, fixed routes, forty strangers moving at the slowest person's pace, and a price tag that excludes most independent travellers. There's no way to pause for a coffee, follow a side street that caught your eye, or quietly slip away at minute thirty.
What iWander does:
You type in any city (or just tap once, wherever you're standing), pick how long you want to walk, press play, and iWander builds a personal audio walking tour in about thirty seconds, narrated by a character guide yof your choice. Pause for a coffee, skip a section, take the long way home: the guide walks at your pace, not the other way round.
A few things under the hood we're proud of:
- 1,000+ cities, 9 languages, with tours tuned to the time of day, the weather, and what's actually open.
- A 6.5-million-place curated stories layer, from the bakery open since 1822 to the café where Hemingway wrote. The two years we spent building this database and the storytelling engine on top of it is what turns a list of stops into an actual tour with a beginning, middle and end.
- 60+ curated tours across 25 destinations, written and recorded by world-class local storytellers, because no algorithm can replace someone who knows a city street by street.
- Ask anything: point your camera at a building or ask out loud, and get a location-aware answer.
- In-app booking for the attractions, restaurants and events you discover along the way.
What we'd love from this community:
Here's the honest bit. For the past two years we've been heads-down on the B2B tech side, building the engine and working with enterprise partners. Now that the consumer app is live, it's the right time to build out the brand: our tribe, our social presence, our community of wanderers. And frankly, that's the part we need help with.
So if you're a creator, storyteller, marketer, community builder, or just someone who loves this space and wants to get involved and help us grow, please reach out. I'd love to talk.
And of course, try the app and tell me where it falls short. It's free to download with 30 free audio minutes on sign-up. If you want a live demo, drop a city + a theme + a duration in the comments (e.g. "90-minute food-and-history walk through Lisbon at sunset") and I'll share what iWander comes up with.
📱 App Store: apps.apple.com/gb/app/iwander-travel-guides/id6504555425
🌍 Website: www.iwander.io
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/iwander
Happy to answer any questions: about the product, the storytelling engine, or what it's like building a startup with your brother 😅.
Thanks!
Marius
Hi Marius,
Thanks for sharing iWander and your story with the Travel Massive community.
First, it's fantastic to see your product finally launch since we met at our London Travel Massive and Travel Trends Social during WTM week last November. You guys have been keeping busy!
Me and @kckiwigirl tried iWander out in Melbourne, and this is the first AI generated city guide that makes me feel excited about this kind of tech. The UX is truly great... from the way it compiles a linear route and researches the web for stories and anecdotes to tell you in a story-based format.
Clearly an incredible amount of human effort has gone on to developing iWander, so hats off to you and Marius.
In terms of initial feedback — I would have liked to choose an Australian mascot for our tour guide. Perhaps a Wombat or Wallaby since we're in Australia? Maybe there's some more characters to unlock in the upgrade based on the country you are visiting.
Also, when is an Android version coming? And what are you planning next?
Would love to have a wombat! Great idea!
Hi Ian,
Thanks so much for the positive feedback and the comments! I love the fact that you've picked up that we've spent a huge amount of time refining the narrative - and not just stringing a bunch of POIs together in a route that makes sense. This has definitely been the biggest part of the development, so it's encouraging to see that people recognise this.
To answer your question re: the wombat/other avatars: yes, yes and yes! We want to really have fun with the avatars, generating dynimic avatars with local accents and features, allowing users to build their own avatars/guides, and also offering the ability to individual creators and human guides to create "digital twin" avatars so they can keep guiding customers digitally.
Android work is underway, and there are still plenty of exciting updates coming to the iOS app in the next few weeks.
But my priority now is to now grow our iWander tribe - both in terms of user adoption and team/contributors! If anyone has thoughts or would like to help out on this (especially social media), please reach out!
This is a great app! We also enjoyed trialling it in a more off-beat location outside a major city (Bacchus Marsh) and it gave some awesome intel. Look forward to checking it out in more places! I hope London is treating you well as summer comes to town :)
Thanks so much Casey, and love the fact that you stress-tested it in more off-the-beaten track locations! Our goal is for the guide to be able to tell you great stories anywhere in the world, whether it's a major location or completely off-grid. Still some work to do to really crack all off-grid places, but it's getting there! Please do keep sharing feedback with me
Very impressive Marius
Congratulations to you and your brother for building this, it looks like a monumental amount of work has gone into getting to this stage and it looks fantastic!
Have you got a timeframe on when it will be on Google Play?
Thanks a lot, Nick! Android development is under way and we expect to have it ready later this summer. And still plenty of iterating on iOS that we are understanding more about how customers are using and interacting with the technology.
Would love to hear how it performs on some of your top destinations in Wales - maybe there's a way we can work together on this?
That's great to know, look forward to it.
I've got a few ideas, sure you do too. It would be great to have a chat to see what works. I'll drop you a DM.
That would be great!
Well done on an excellent product. Looking forward to realistic human tour guides.
Thanks a lot Nathan! Just a quick question on this - would you rather have a human tour guide avatar rather than the animal characters?
We've experimented with both and intially wanted to launch with a duo-lingo style-guide approach to make the brand more memorable. However, I see huge potential to offer more realistic human guides, even working with guides to create digital twins. I'd be interested to learn if this would be more relevant for you?
Hi Marius,
Congratulations on the launch!
I really enjoyed reading your story and the philosophy behind iWander. The combination of storytelling, local discovery, human curation, and AI is particularly interesting.
I run Soul Dreamers in Lisbon, a cultural immersion experience focused on hidden gems, storytelling, multicultural communities, gastronomy, street art, and live music. A large part of what we do revolves around helping people connect more deeply with places through stories and human encounters, so I found a lot of resonance with some of the ideas you’re exploring.
I’d love to try the app and perhaps exchange thoughts at some point on experience design, storytelling, AI, and the future of travel. I suspect there may be some interesting overlaps.
Congratulations again on the launch and wishing you and Antoine lots of success.
Cheers,
Teddy
Hi, Teddy!! Hope you are well! Are you going to the Lisbon TM? My friend Amylee will be there - would love for you to meet her! She lives in Nazare :)
Hey Casey! I will be in Colombia then, and back on 4th July. Please introduce us though!
Hey Teddy! Thanks a lot for your message!
Soul Dreamers sounds like a wonderful concept!
I'd be super interested to hear whether you think an experience like iWander would be complementary to what you offer at Soul Dreamers (e.g. before/after a Soul Dreamers experience), or whether you think there's no overlap between the two audiences.
Would love to discuss more once you've had a chance to try out the app!
Hey Marius,
Is this just for select cities right now?