Old concept

What makes Kronotopia special?

• A trusted connection between travellers and local guides. Kronotopia makes it easy for travellers and guides to find and get to know each other before any booking is done. By guides providing content and users listening to it before selecting a guide, everyone will know beforehand  that the guiding will be a great experience!
• Content focused on why. Typical travel guides offer reviews and suggestions on what to do. The content on Kronotopia focuses on telling you about the history of a place or monument. Travel guides focus on the what, Kronotopia on the why.
• Ease of use.  With Kronotopia you don’t need to stand in a queue to get access to a local guide or an audio guide. You don’t need to search all over the internet to get the information you are interested in either. Kronotopia’s content is based on location, not on pre-defined tours. Just select and play when the time is right for you. No preparation needed. If you like what you hear and want to learn more, you can easily book the local guide in the same app.
• Flexibility. You can choose the type of story you want to hear given your situation. Travelling with the family? Going on a business trip? Travelling with the intent to stay long and learn a lot? With Kronotopia you can choose the level of information that suits your needs. With Kronotopia you can also tailor suggested routes, you don’t need to stick to predefined ones.
• Entertaining. Some guides are easy to listen to, some make you yawn. Kronotopia provides carefully selected story-based audios that are fun to listen to. The content will be quality assured before it is uploaded to the app and will be rated by the users. The guides we collaborate with will be carefully selected and certified. We want you to be able to enjoy and trust the content and guides on Kronotopia.
• Supporting local guides and small businesses. There are local guides with amazing stories and knowledge that have a hard time competing with bigger companies. With Kronotopia local guides can reach more customers and customers can find guides that give them extraordinary experiences.
• From travellers to travellers – variety of views and interests.  Every traveller can share a story to help other travellers and to get an additional source of income. This results in a wide variety of content satisfying many different interests and reflecting our manifold world.
• Trip designers. Planning a trip can be overwhelming and time consuming. We relieve the traveller of the stress of planning while we offer a new source of income to travellers and local guides.
• Modern technology. Kronotopia uses modern technology to create a powerful platform, multi-language content and an easy to use location based ecosystem that puts together travellers, local guides and institutions.

Who are we?

The idea of Kronotopia came to Luisa when she was travelling and wanted to connect the experience of a place (Topos) with its history and development through time (Kronos).

Origins of the idea

We love to travel:   We want to know how history has shaped the places we go to and what brought us to them.

We like things that are easy:   We want a knowledgeable person to tell us about the interesting places we visit, when we want to hear it. Without the need to read signs or travel guides. Without searching for audio guides or queuing to rent one.

We enjoy entertaining and story-based history: We easily drift off when listening to only dates and names but when history is told as a narrative of events with emotions and suspense we can’t stop listening!

We want to have a choice:  Sometimes we are in the mood for detailed information, other times we just want something quick and light. Our children share our curiosity but are often more interested in action than elaborate descriptions. We want to find the right level of information for the mood we are in.

For all these reasons, we want to create Kronotopia, with and for people who want to add a dimension to travelling!

User cases

Light – Business traveler

I am on a business trip in Paris. I will have some hours extra in the city but I don’t want to go to any museum or shop, I just want to stroll around.

After a day of meetings, I find myself in front of to the Eiffel Tower. I open Kronotopia’s app. It shows the map with a zoomed view that includes the closest monument to me, since it reads my location. The following view is shown.

The tab for category Light is selected and I see that I can choose among 20 media clips. I just want to hear something, anything, so I click on the play button which plays the audio on the top of the list which is sorted based on ratings.

I start listening while I admire the tower and take some pictures.

I am getting hungry and on the Ad’s space I get the suggestion of a restaurant near by. It looks nice, I go there.

While I’m eating and looking at the tower, I ask myself if it is a beautiful monument or if it is ugly, as people thought back when it was constructed, according to the audio. Do I find it beautiful because I have seen it’s image everywhere? It is impressive and symmetric. I like that it is not a big block of material, I like that the light can pass through the structure. Beautiful? I don’t know. I only know I like it.

Beach holiday

We have been 5 days in Marmaris just relaxing and enjoying the sun. It has been nice, but now I want something to happen.

I remember that I saw some ads somewhere in the hotel about a travel app. I go to the reception and I see among the brochures what I was looking for, the “Kronotopia” app.

I download it and I get a map of Marmaris. I zoom out and I get some nearby suggestions.

The first sight is highlighted, and I see that there are some audio clips about it. The name is Pammukale, it has several clips and it looks nice. I click on one of the clips and I get a zoomed in version of the map.

It is more than what I expected, it is not only nice nature, but there is also a nice amphitheater and baths.

I ask the receptionist how to get there. The hotel has day excursions there certain days. When googling I see that it is also quite easy to get there by public transport and the time schedules are more flexible.

On the way back, after listening to the clips of the Pamukkale, I realized that this place has everything.

We went first to Hierapolis, which turned out to be a Unesco sight. It was nice to hear about its history and that the city was named after the wife of the hero Telefos, ”Hiera”.

I have always liked Greek mythology and just hearing that sentence in that place, transported me to a dream, to a blend of reality and fantasy.

Then swimming in the Cleopatra thermal baths,  among ruins, prolonged the feeling.

It was also very interesting to learn about the geology of the place and why the terraces look the way they do. Just the right amount of information for me. I am happy I found the Kronotopia app.

Detailed

Weekend discover traveler

I am in Paris and I open the Kronotopia app that I downloaded at home. I created an account and a private route based on some public ones. For me preparing is part of the travelling experience. I am logged in and I go directly to the routes view and my private routes are shown on top of all other public routes.

When I am in front of the Eiffel Tower, I click on the “Your location” icon and the map zooms in to my location and changes to Monument view. The tab for detailed clips is selected since it is what I chose as default category. I browse the list of available clips, click one of them and I listen while I queue to get to the top.

It was great to have a context on this impressive monument and on the city. I am surprised on how little I knew about it. I’ve been here several times. I have scrutinized the city in pieces. I have gone where the locals go. But I have not known the city like this before. I think I start to fully understand it.

I enjoyed the story, how it was narrated and presented, so I click on the 3 dots and rate the storyteller.

Children

Family trip

After the usual complaints in the morning we are in front of the Eiffel Tower. I take my phone out and tell the children that we are going to listen to a short story about the Eiffel Tower. I had prepared and seen that Kronotopia is friendly for children, they not only have audios, there are also videos sometimes and I know that it is easier to hook the children with a visual part.

We find a good place to sit in the park in front of the tower and we start watching the film. A curious hand clicks on the hide icon on the video and instead of looking at a screen we all look at the construction.

When the clip finishes, I ask my husband if he remembers a film where they showed how they used the tower to send information during the second world war.