A docent with a strong voice can handle twelve people in a quiet gallery. Put that same docent in front of thirty fourth graders next to a sea lion pool, or on a garden path with a leaf blower running two beds over, and the back half of the group hears nothing. That’s usually when someone starts shopping for tour headsets.
Altru doesn’t manage audio hardware, so this is an equipment decision, not a software one. But it touches your Altru setup in a few places (group bookings, staffing, possibly a rental fee), and those are covered near the end. First, the hardware.
The four kinds of tour audio worth considering
1. Transmitter and receiver systems (“whisper” systems)
The guide wears a small transmitter with a lapel or headset microphone. Each visitor gets a receiver with an earpiece. The guide can speak at a normal volume and everyone in range hears clearly, which is why these are the default choice for museums, historic houses, and anywhere you want tours to stay quiet for other visitors.
They come in a few flavors:
- Digital 2.4 GHz systems are common, license-free, and usually offer many channels so several tours can run at once without hearing each other. Range is moderate and walls cut it down.
- UHF or FM analog systems often carry farther outdoors, which suits zoos, gardens, and large grounds. Check channel counts and whether any frequencies need licensing where you operate.
- Two-way systems let a second staff member (or a sign language interpreter, or a keeper doing a talk) speak on the same channel. Useful, but more expensive and more to manage.
2. Portable voice amplifiers
A waist-worn speaker with a headset mic. Cheap, nothing to hand out, nothing to collect. The tradeoff is that everyone nearby hears it too, so they work well outdoors and poorly in a gallery where another group is ten feet away. Many zoos and gardens keep a few on hand even if they own a whisper system.
3. Visitor-phone audio
Some systems stream the guide’s voice to visitors’ own phones through an app or a web page, and the visitor uses their own earbuds. No hardware to clean or charge. The catch is everything that depends on the visitor: battery, data or Wi-Fi, earbuds, and patience for setup at the start of the tour. It tends to suit adult groups better than school groups.
4. Assistive listening
Whatever you buy for general tours, plan for visitors with hearing loss. Many tour receivers accept a neckloop that couples to hearing aids with a telecoil, and some facilities add a fixed induction loop in a theater or orientation room. Ask vendors specifically about neckloop compatibility and how many you should stock. Accessibility requirements vary by facility and funding source, so confirm what applies to you rather than assuming a headset kit covers it.
How to choose: the questions that actually decide it
- How big is your largest regular group? Count school buses, not average tours. Buy enough receivers for your biggest common group plus spares for dead batteries and lost units.
- How many tours run at the same time? Each concurrent tour needs its own channel, and channels can bleed if groups pass close together. Test this in your actual building.
- Indoors, outdoors, or both? Thick masonry walls in a historic house and an open-air zoo pathway are very different problems. Ask for a demo kit and walk your real routes before you buy.
- Who charges and cleans them? Multi-unit charging cases save a lot of time. Decide whether earpieces are single-use (disposable earbuds or covers) or sanitized between tours, and who owns that job at closing.
- What happens when one walks out the door? Some groups collect an ID or a phone number at handout. Others accept a small loss rate and budget for it. Pick one before your first big season.
- Buy or rent? If you only run large tours a few times a year, renting for those events can beat owning gear that sits in a closet. If tours run daily, owning usually wins.
Where Altru comes into it
None of the hardware connects to Altru, but your bookings drive how many kits you need on a given day. A few practical habits:
- Capture headset needs at booking. When a school or adult group is booked through group sales, record whether they need audio kits and how many, along with any assistive listening needs. Whether you use a note, an attribute, or another field depends on how your team already works; the point is that it lives on the reservation, not on a sticky note.
- Build a query for upcoming tours. A simple query of the next week’s group reservations, with group size and that headset field, gives whoever manages the equipment a daily count. It also flags days when you’ll have more concurrent tours than channels.
- Decide whether to charge for it. Some organizations include audio with the tour price; others charge a small rental fee for self-guided or premium tours. If you want to charge separately, test how that would be set up in Altru (for example, as an added item on a group reservation or a separate fee) in a sandbox or with Blackbaud support before you publish pricing. Setup choices affect how revenue reports read later.
- Track condition outside Altru. Inventory of receivers, batteries, and repairs is better handled in a simple spreadsheet or asset log. Altru isn’t built for equipment tracking, and forcing it there usually creates more work than it saves.
A sensible starting kit
For a mid-sized museum or garden starting from nothing, a reasonable first purchase is one multi-channel whisper system sized to your largest regular group plus spares, a couple of portable voice amplifiers for outdoor talks, a handful of neckloops, and a charging case. Run it for a season, note where coverage fails and which days you ran short, and expand from there instead of buying for the busiest day you can imagine.
Quick answers
Do visitors need to bring anything?
Not with a transmitter and receiver system; you hand out everything. Visitor-phone systems require their own phone and earbuds.
Can two tours share a room?
Yes, if each is on its own channel. Test it in the space first, since walls, metal display cases, and other wireless gear can affect performance.
Can Altru track who borrowed which headset?
Not in any purpose-built way that we know of. A sign-out sheet or spreadsheet tied to the group’s reservation name is usually the simplest approach.
