Hello there!
It’s more than 4 years we’ve been developing our product and our company. There are a lot of new users coming every month and now we have a pretty nice and involved TourDash community. So we decided to finally introduce ourselves and open a little bit a door to the backstage. In this post we write a small story about the TourDash creation, tour statistics, famous clients and our plans.
History and team
Once upon a time in the distant 2013 a great idea came to the Rosswel who was living in a beautiful country named Netherlands. He was a Google Trusted Photographer himself. He came up with a project which could enhance Google Maps Business View virtual tour by offering options for:
- better navigation;
- adding information to visual aspects;
- adding promotions and actions;
- integrating videos, photos and other webpages (reservation system or online shop);
- learning about the visitors behavior.
The very first prototype was done by one programmer. It was simple but contained all the basis functionality like navigation menu, boundary and dynamic hotspots.
After the successful testing of the prototype the intense project development started as well as the search for investors. For that period of time the idea was fresh and topical and attracted a lot of attention. From the lack of competitors TourDash became very popular among Google Trusted Photographers.
Development of the final version took almost 6 months and by the end of 2013 the first sales to resellers were done. In the spring of 2014 the development of TourDash 2.0 began. By the summer 2015 the interface was updated, the mobile version and multi-tours were added as well as some more features. Last year there wasn’t much of the development of the project, although, we did make several upgrades such as add-on system.
There is a great team behind of the project. Passionate developers led by Alex Minakov and beautiful marketing team headed by Elena Shapka.
As of October 2017, TourDash will be continued by its Chief Technical Officer, Alex Minakov. Alex has been on board since the very beginning and has been working on the app since the first prototype. After the successful launch of the TourDash app four years ago he became CTO of TourDash BV. As a result of the transfer of ownership, the app and all contracts will be serviced by TourDash OU, the company of Alex seated in the EU country Estonia.
Tour statistics and famous clients
To this day more than 6500 TourDash tours have been created in total. Of them about 4300 demo tours and more than 2000 paid ones. The most frequently used feature in TourDash tours is Advanced Navigation.
The most famous clients we provide tours for are:
Westminster Abbey, Crowland Abbey, United Colors of Benetton, Mark and spencer, Topman, Hilton, Royal Caribbean, United Airlines, London City Airport, Oxford Brookes University, Clifton College, College of North West London, Indiana State Museum, Barkerville Historic Town, Hertford Castle and others.
The most popular companies’ areas which use TourDash are hotels, restaurants and shops. But also there a lot of tours for automobile salons, sport centers, museums, photo studios, nightclubs, campings, botanical gardens, schools and kindergartens, different kind of medical clinics, markets, libraries, casinos, banks, aqua parks, different productions, pharmacies, workspaces, theaters, funeral companies, boats, radio stations, different agencies and centers and even the whole towns. And this is not the exhaustive list. So if you are still not sure about whether you need a virtual 3d tour or not you can get inspired right now!
Concerning our users, 2129 resellers from 16 different countries have registered in TourDash since 2014. The biggest amount of users we have are from the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain.
Future
We have ambitious plans for the new updates. So we consider TourDash 3.0 will have:
- Google Maps publishing tours;
- VR support;
- mobile version refresh and upgrade;
- mutli-language content;
- interactive navigation maps;
- standalone tours (published tours without uploading to Google Maps);
- API for developers (create your own plugins and extend TourDash functionality).
The new functionality is coming soon. Keep in mind that the more active resellers we have the faster we grow. So tell your friends and colleagues about us. Share what TourDash is. We are glad to have such a great community and hope you like us too. 🙂
Thank you all for being with us!