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"I was really impressed with the thoroughness and quality of the tours."
John McManus, Founder of Magellan's Travel Supplies
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"I thought I knew my native city, Toronto, like the back of my hand. Well, Ruth Lor Malloy has obviously got more hands than I. The latest productions of this veteran travel writer - one, a tour of Toronto and the other, an intimate look at Toronto's many Chinatowns (including most south-east Asian attractions) - is overflowing with fresh information and exciting photography. I could hardly wait to get out and explore my own home town after spending several delightful minutes "touring" the city online."
Lorraine O'Donnell Williams travel writer and author
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IN THE NEWS 
Specialized tours offer unique ways to see a city; 'staycations' helped out February 19, 2010
Denver Business Journal - by Ed Sealover (an excerpt)
Picture the 1950s: Big, gas-guzzling cars. Families fleeing the cities for suburbs. And large group tours, either by bus or on foot, of visitors that hit the same few historic places and get told the same stories in every city.
Now small, green cars are hip. The baby boomers are moving back downtown. And the tour business is finding new life through new technology, specialized jaunts and a growing trend toward self-guided but expert-described explorations of hidden secrets of a city.
In fact, you might not even know you're walking by someone who is taking a tour of a city now, as they might appear just to be listening to an iPod or jumping out of a limo with friends when they are actually learning about the sites, sounds and tastes of Denver.
And businesspeople are bringing new ideas to this field, profiting off the public's desire to delve deeper into their own city or their vacation destination when such information is easier than ever to access and when their resources are stretched thinner than ever.
"I think travelers start to realize that if they can enhance their vacation for under $20, when they are already spending hundreds or thousands of dollars, that's a good value," said Marie Profant, CEO of the company Visual Travel Tours. "It's the next best thing to having your friend take you around town."
Beyond the self-guided tour: Profant's company, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., takes the evolution of the self-guided tour one step further. She has built a series of audio and visual tours in 22 states and 30 countries that can be downloaded onto an iPhone or other mobile devices and guide people across large areas. |
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