Software package

City guide package

A city guide with a place database carrying opening hours, attributes and a verification date, an editorial review queue, itineraries and themed guides built from places, an events calendar, open-now map search, business claims and seasonal highlights, ready to configure around your area.

Custom build Concept demo

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Who it is for

Built for

A good fit

Destination marketing bodies for a town, city or district, town centre partnerships and business improvement districts, tourism associations run by volunteers, and local publishers producing a what's-on and where-to-go guide for their area, from a couple of hundred places with one part-time editor up to a few thousand places with a small editorial team and a printed edition. Daily users are the editor who reviews changes, plans features and schedules seasonal highlights, the partnership or membership manager who handles business claims and tiers, the business owner who keeps their own listing accurate, volunteers who verify places on foot, and visitors who want to know what is open now, how to get there and what to do with a wet afternoon.

Also worth knowing

It is less suited to national or multi-region travel sites that need booking and revenue sharing, to review platforms built on public ratings, and to publishers whose main output is long-form news rather than place information. Each has its own package or needs custom work.

The operational problem it solves

How it runs, step by step

The editor opens the review queue on a Monday in late October.

Overnight a claimed bakery has proposed new winter hours and a photograph; the change shows the old and new side by side, she approves it, and the bakery's entry updates in the independent shops guide and on the map at once.
A volunteer walking the riverside district has marked six places verified and flagged that a gallery has closed; the editor sets the gallery to closed, and it drops out of the two itineraries that included it with a note in each guide's history.
The queue also shows forty places not verified in the last year, sorted by how many guides include them, which becomes the volunteers' list for Saturday.

At eleven the partnership manager opens claims: a new restaurant has claimed its listing and proved it through the email address already on record, so she approves it and offers the premium tier the board agreed; the owner pays through the payment link and the listing gains its gallery and a place in the eating-out guide the same afternoon.

The events import has brought in the venues' December programme and matched the Christmas concert against a submission the choir made last week, so there is one event, not two; she confirms the merge.
After lunch the editor schedules the winter highlights for the home page from the first of December: the market, the lantern walk itinerary and a feature on late-night shopping, each built from places already verified this season.
In the old town a visitor with one bar of signal opens the guide, taps open-now and sees the three cafés still serving with their closing times and a walking line to the nearest, before the map tiles have finished loading.
On Friday the editor exports the board's figures: places verified this season, claimed listings, the most-used guides and the pages visitors opened from the map.

Features

What the package does

The package ships as modules that follow the guide from data to visitor: the place database with hours, attributes and verification, the editorial queue and the guides and features built from places, the events calendar with imports and merging, the business layer of claims and tiers, and the visitor layer of map search, itineraries and seasonal highlights built to load on a poor signal. Each module below lists what it does; the comparison table shows which package variant includes it.

Listings and search

Place databaseEach place has a category, location, seasonal opening hours with exceptions and descriptive attributes.

Workflow and tasks

Last-verified dates and unverified listEvery place records who last checked it and when, and an unverified-places list shows what needs checking next.
Editorial queuePlaces, features and guides move through draft, review and published states, so nothing goes live unchecked.

Content and editorial

Itineraries and themed guidesEditors assemble itineraries and themed guides from existing places, with change history kept.
Scheduled seasonal highlightsHome page highlights are prepared in advance and go live on the date the editor sets.

Scheduling

Events calendar with venue submissionsVenues submit events through a form and each event can be linked to its place on the guide.

Directory and reviews

Map search with open-now filterVisitors filter by category, attribute and open now, with the essentials shown before the map finishes loading on a poor signal.

Accounts and permissions

Business claims and proposed changesOwners claim a listing with proof by email or post and propose changes, which an editor reviews before they appear.

Billing and payments

Premium listing tiersPremium tiers are sold through payment links with a card provider and apply to the listing once paid.

Integrations

Event imports with duplicate matchingEvents can be imported from venue feeds, with matching so a concert submitted twice appears once.

Messaging and notifications

Volunteer verification view and visitor newsletterVolunteers can verify places from a phone while walking a district, and a visitor newsletter can be built from highlights and events.

Package variants compared

Website
Custom Platform

Which features each package variant includes
Feature	Website	Custom Platform
Place database	Included	Included
Last-verified dates and unverified list	Included	Included
Editorial queue	Optional	Included
Itineraries and themed guides	Included	Included
Events calendar with venue submissions	Included	Included
Map search with open-now filter	Included	Included
Scheduled seasonal highlights	Included	Included
Business claims and proposed changes	Optional	Optional
Premium listing tiers	Optional	Optional
Event imports with duplicate matching	Not in this variant	Optional
Volunteer verification view and visitor newsletter	Not in this variant	Optional

Roles and permissions

Who does what

Editor
- Review and publish proposed changes to places, features and guides
- Build itineraries and themed guides from places
- Schedule seasonal highlights and home page features
- See verification status across the database and export board figures
Partnership manager
- Review business claims and approve or decline them
- Assign premium tiers and issue payment links
- Merge or reject imported and submitted events
- See claimed and unclaimed listings by district
Volunteer verifier
- Mark places verified from a phone with a date and a note
- Propose corrections to hours, attributes and photographs
- Flag a place as closed or moved
Business owner
- Claim and prove ownership of their listing
- Propose changes to hours, description and photographs for review
- Submit events at their venue
- See how often their listing was viewed
Visitor
- Search places by category, attribute and open-now on a map
- Follow an itinerary with directions between stops
- Browse events by date and place
- Save places and guides for a visit on a poor connection

Example screen

Concept demo

Concept demo of a city guide editorial queue showing proposed place changes side by side, recent verifications, long-unverified places and pending event merges.

The editor's review queue: proposed changes with old and new values side by side, verifications from volunteers today, places unverified for a year sorted by the guides they appear in, and pending event merges.

Scope and options

What is included and what is extra

In the base package

Place database with categories, location, seasonal opening hours, exceptions and attributes
Last-verified date and verifier per place with an unverified-places list
Editorial queue with draft, review and published states for places, features and guides
Itineraries and themed guides assembled from places with change history
Events calendar with venue submission form and place linking
Map search by category, attribute and open-now with essentials shown before the map loads
Seasonal highlights scheduled in advance

Common add-ons

Business claims with proof by email or post and owner-proposed changes
Premium listing tiers with payment links through a card provider
Event imports from venue feeds with duplicate matching
Volunteer verification app view for walking a district
Visitor newsletter built from highlights and events

Needs custom work

Printed guide generated from the place and guide data
Public transport and parking data on place and itinerary pages
Several coverage areas with their own editors and branding
Reporting for a board or a funder in a prescribed format

See the custom development service

Ownership, maintenance and pricing

After the build

Deployment and ownership

The package runs on hosting you control or on hosting we manage for you; the choice is made in the proposal and can change later. The body or publisher owns the code and its data in either case. Places with their verification history, guides, events, claims and photographs with their credits can be exported at any time in standard formats, so the guide can move provider or feed a future print edition without re-keying.

Maintenance

Maintenance is optional and scoped separately from the setup. When taken, it covers security updates to the platform and its dependencies, monitoring of event imports, claim emails and payment callbacks, backups, and a monthly window for small configuration changes such as a new category, a new attribute or a changed claim rule. Larger changes are quoted as change requests against the original scope.

Pricing model

Priced per proposal.

The package is sold as a one-off setup and configuration with optional monthly maintenance and hosting as separate recurring lines. The setup figure depends on the number of places and the state of the data imported, the add-ons selected, how many event sources are connected, whether premium tiers are sold and through which provider, and whether you host it yourself. Your proposal states each line separately so recurring costs are never hidden in the setup.

Also used in

Software package

Custom build Concept demo

Variants

Place database with categories, location, seasonal opening hours, exceptions and attributes
Last-verified date and verifier per place with an unverified-places list
Editorial queue with draft, review and published states for places, features and guides
Itineraries and themed guides assembled from places with change history

Priced per proposal. A written proposal is the only binding figure.

Get a quote for this package Prefer a fully custom build?

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How are places kept up to date?

Every change, whether from a claimed business, a volunteer or an editor, goes through the review queue and is published by an editor. Each place records when it was last verified and by whom, and the queue lists places not verified within the period you set, ordered by how many guides they appear in.

What happens when a place closes?

The editor marks it closed. It leaves the map and open-now search, drops out of every itinerary and guide that included it with a note in the guide's history, and its page shows a closed notice for a period you choose before being retired.

How do businesses claim a listing?

With the claims add-on, an owner finds their listing, requests the claim and proves it through the email address or postal address already on record. The partnership manager approves it, after which the owner proposes changes for review and submits events. Claims never bypass the editor.

Do premium listings affect search results?

No. A premium tier changes what a listing may show, such as more photographs or a place in a themed guide, within rules you set. Open-now and category search order places by relevance and distance, not by tier.

Where do events come from?

Venues submit through a form in the base package, and the import add-on brings in feeds from the venues you connect. Imported and submitted events that look like the same event are shown to the partnership manager to merge, so the calendar has one entry per event.

Does it work for visitors with a poor signal?

Pages are built so the name, hours, address and directions appear before any map or media loads, and visitors can save places and guides on their phone for later. It is not a native app and it does not replace a signal entirely.

Is this a finished product I can see running?

Not yet. The readiness badge on this page shows the real state: the package is currently a custom build assembled from our listings, directory, publishing and orders modules for each guide, and the example screen is a labelled concept demo rather than a live guide. Requirements outside the listed options go through custom city guide development.

Get a quote for City guide package

Tell us about your locations, the people who will use it and the add-ons you need. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.