iWander is an AI tour guide that builds you a personal walking tour of any city, anytime you want
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iWander is an AI tour guide that builds you a personal walking tour of any city, anytime you want
iWander is an AI tour guide that builds you a personal walking tour of any city, anytime you want
was posted by Marius Nigond, Antoine Nigond
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Featured on Jun 9, 2026 (1 month ago).
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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
Love this, as I love quirky sites and places!
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!
Hi Marius,
Firstly, congratulations to you and Antoine on the launch. It's always exciting to see people trying to make travel more accessible through innovation and making use of AI in the best possible manner.
As someone who spends a lot of time designing and leading local experiences in Mumbai and India, I absolutely relate to your point about travellers wanting flexibility. I've often noticed that although people love joining walking tours but they always want to do it at their own pace, which is fair.
The point where you say that no two travellers experience a place in the same way, is 100% true. Rarely do tour operators who conduct these walking tours take this into consideration.
Hope you expand to India soon. It's certainly a challenging market, but one with tremendous depth, character, and curiosity. I'd be interested to see how travellers respond to a platform like this here.
Wishing you both the very best with the journey ahead.
Thanks so much Sayali! We find India such an interesting market (both outbound and inbound). The platform is already set up to cater to Indian destinations - I'd be very keen to hear what you think of it.
That's awesome, Marius! Extremely happy to hear that you are already set up for the Indian market.
The variety here is huge: food, history, architecture, local communities, markets, art and so much more.
Mumbai itself is host to a lot of diverse local experiences.
I've often seen travellers spend days trying to soak in the city's energy, yet leave feeling there's still so much more to explore.
I'd be happy to try the platform and share my thoughts.
Looking forward to seeing how it evolves. Best of luck: )
looks interesting. what is the timeline for release in Android?
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!
You can connect with her @amylee on here - I'll let her know to look out for you! :)
yes, please connect us!
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!
Hi Marius,
That’s actually a very interesting question.
My first instinct is that the two are mostly complementary rather than competitive.
Soul Dreamers isn’t really trying to solve the “how do I discover a city?” problem. It’s more about creating meaningful human encounters through storytelling, local communities, food, music, and shared experiences. A lot of what guests remember are the conversations and unexpected moments that happen between people.
What I find interesting about iWander is that it could potentially help people discover a place before or after joining an experience like ours. Someone might use it to explore independently during the day and then join Soul Dreamers in the evening for a deeper social and cultural immersion.
I also think there is an interesting overlap around storytelling. The question I’ve been exploring for years is how technology can help people discover places without removing the human element that makes travel meaningful.
I’ll definitely give the app a proper try and would be happy to compare notes afterwards. I suspect there are some fascinating conversations to be had there.
Can't wait to try it out, I have an Android so I am on the waiting list.
Thanks Tracy! Will let you know once it's ready!
Hi Marius I am a language tour guide from Cape Town, South Africa and came across this post by pure luck. Congratulations to both of you. What a brilliant idea. I cannot wait to hear more about it and like Tracy above, I also have an Android and put my name down on the waiting list. One thing to keep in mind as far as South Africa is concerned (if you haven't already taken that into consideration) is SAFETY! Unfortunately in this beautiful city of ours, safety is a number one priority and walking without a guide or someone who knows the city well, is asking for trouble. I wish it wasn't, but sadly it is. Thanks again and so excited to hear more. Waiting in anticipation Christel icoexist2@gmail.com
Ok, I want to know about this!
These Apps are good for developed countries, places like Uganda here where network is limited hmmm. maybe we should think of offline Apps for travel.