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Service

City guide development

For destination marketing bodies, town centre partnerships and local guide publishers who need a place database, an editorial workflow, itineraries, events and business listings that stay accurate on a visitor's phone rather than a brochure site that was true the day it launched.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A destination body for a market town and its surrounding villages publishes a visitor site, a printed guide, a what's-on leaflet and a social media feed, all from the same small team.

  • The place pages were written for the launch: the café that closed in the autumn is still listed, the museum's winter hours are the summer ones, and the walking route page links to a map image that nobody can update.
  • Businesses send corrections by email to whoever they know on the team, and the corrections wait until someone has a quiet afternoon.
  • The events calendar is a copy of whatever the venues sent, in whatever format they sent it, so the same festival appears twice with two dates.

Where it gets harder

The editor wants to run a seasonal feature on the Christmas market and a themed guide to independent shops, but every feature means hand-assembling a page from place entries that may be out of date, and there is no way to say which places have been checked this year.

  • Businesses want to be listed, a few are willing to pay for a better listing, and the team has no way to take a claim, review it and show it fairly.
  • Visitors arrive on a phone, often with a poor signal in the old town, and the site loads a map library and a video before it shows the opening hours they came for.
  • The partnership board asks which pages visitors used, which businesses are claimed and whether the guide is any more accurate than last year, and the team cannot say.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom city guide build normally covers:

  • A place database where each place carries categories A location, opening hours with seasonal variations and exceptions, attributes such as accessibility features, dog-friendly, card-only or free entry, photographs with credits, and a last-verified date and verifier
  • An editorial workflow with draft Review and published states for places, features and guides, so that a volunteer or a business can propose a change and an editor approves it
  • Itineraries and themed guides assembled from places in the database So that a change to a place flows through to every guide that includes it
  • An events calendar fed by venue submissions and imported listings With duplicates merged and each event tied to its place
  • Map search by category Attribute and open-now
  • Business claims where a trader claims their listing Proves it and maintains it within rules, and premium listing tiers handled through an orders adapter where the body charges
  • Seasonal highlights that the editor schedules in advance
  • Pages built to load quickly and remain readable on a poor connection With the essentials shown before any map or media

How discovery works

Discovery walks through a season with the editor and the partnership manager: what the coverage area is, what data already exists and in what state, how places are verified and by whom, how features and guides are planned, where events come from, whether businesses claim and pay, and what the board needs to see. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: curate, verify, publish, claim, plan, report.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Ticket sales for events, which stay with the venues and their ticketing platforms and are linked, not sold
  • Accommodation booking, which belongs to the operators and the booking engines they already use
  • Reviews from the public, which the body may choose not to host at all

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A destination body covering a city and twenty surrounding villages with two thousand places, a paid editorial team, business claims with three paid tiers, an events import from several venues and a printed guide generated from the same data is a different build from a town centre partnership with two hundred places and a volunteer editor, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of a season, including the current site, the place data in whatever form it exists, the events sources and the print guide
  • A written scope document naming each stage from curation to reporting, the data model for places and what is excluded
  • Design of a place page, the map search, an itinerary and the editorial review screen on phone and desktop, with the phone page tested on a slow connection
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Import and cleaning of existing place and event data with every place marked unverified until checked, where relevant
  • Editorial templates for features, themed guides and seasonal highlights set up from your branding
  • Training for editors, the partnership manager and a business owner who will claim a listing, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the current site, the place data, the events sources, photo libraries with their credits and the print guide; the editor and the partnership manager named as contacts.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the editor, the partnership manager and a board member; the coverage area, the place data model, the claim rules and the scope document are agreed with milestones.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of a place page, the open-now map search, an itinerary and the editorial review queue, reviewed on phones in the places visitors actually stand.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: places, categories and hours first, then the editorial workflow, features and guides, then events, map search, claims and premium tiers.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    The editorial team runs a verification sweep of a district, publishes a themed guide and takes two business claims through review, telling us where the workflow differs from practice.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Attributes, hours exceptions, review steps, claim rules and page weight are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Place data imported and verification status set, redirects from the old site in place, claim invitations prepared for businesses, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The guide goes live with the new season; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Mapping and routing services for place locations, map search and walking itineraries
  • Card payment providers for premium listing tiers through an orders adapter
  • Event ticketing platforms linked from events, never selling through the guide
  • Venue and tourism event feeds imported into the calendar with duplicate matching
  • Image libraries and media suppliers with photographer credits carried through
  • Email providers for claim verification, editorial notifications and a visitor newsletter
  • Print production tools receiving place and guide data for a printed edition
  • Public transport and parking data shown on place and itinerary pages where a source exists

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A destination body covering a city and its villages

The situation

A destination body covering a historic city and the villages around it published two thousand places from a spreadsheet exported years ago, with corrections arriving by email and an events calendar copied from venue newsletters.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build rather than a directory theme is the verification trail: the board wanted to see what share of places had been checked this season and which guides contained unverified places, and the print edition had to come from the same data.

The scope we would propose

  • A place database with seasonal hours and exceptions, attributes including step-free access and a last-verified date per place
  • An editorial workflow where businesses and volunteers propose changes and an editor publishes them
  • Themed guides and itineraries built from places so that a closure disappears from every guide at once
  • An events calendar importing from the main venues with duplicate matching and a submission form for the rest
  • Business claims with proof by email to the listed address and three premium tiers through a payment adapter
  • Seasonal highlights scheduled a quarter ahead
  • A place page that shows the name, hours and directions before the map loads

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Coverage area and the number of places, and the state of the existing data
  • Opening hours complexity: seasonal variations, exceptions and open-now search
  • Editorial workflow depth and how many editors, volunteers and businesses propose changes
  • Events sources: imports with duplicate matching, submission forms and how many venues
  • Business claims and premium tiers, and the payment provider involved
  • Itineraries, themed guides and seasonal highlights and whether a printed edition is generated
  • Mapping service and the attributes shown on the map
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

City guide package

Place database with opening hours and attributes, editorial review, itineraries and themed guides, events calendar, map search, business claims and premium listings for destination bodies and local publishers.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How do you decide between a custom build and the package?

Discovery compares your coverage area and editorial practice with what the city guide package does through configuration. A town or district with a few hundred places, one editor, standard categories and unpaid listings usually fits the package. Thousands of places, event imports from several venues, paid tiers or a printed edition generated from the data point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

How do we keep opening hours accurate?

Each place carries hours with seasonal variations and exceptions, a last-verified date and the person who verified it. Businesses that have claimed their listing can update hours themselves for an editor to approve, and the editorial queue shows places not verified within the period you set, so a verification sweep is a list rather than a guess.

Can businesses pay for a better listing?

If the body chooses to, yes. Premium tiers define what a listing may show, such as more photographs, a longer description or placement in a themed guide, and are paid through a card provider connected during setup. The tiers never change the editorial facts of a place or its position in open-now search.

Does the guide sell event tickets or book hotels?

No. Events link to the venue's own ticketing and accommodation links to the operator's own booking. The guide tells the visitor what is on and where to go; transactions stay with the businesses.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and data, including every place, its verification history and the photographs with their credits, are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and the guide can move to another provider.

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