iWander, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered travel companion, has unveiled an iOS app equipping travelers with a tour guide on the go.
The company’s app can generate the walking tours with character-led narration, including a history buff and a counter culture persona, across more than 1000 cities. It also includes curated tours built by storytellers across 25 destinations and offers in-app booking for attractions, restaurants and events.
iWander, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Travel Startup for 2025, was founded in 2023 as a B2B2C service. Co-founder and CEO Marius Nigond said that with technology moving so fast the startup now needs its “own playground.”
“We want to be able to ship our latest models and product ideas, see how travelers actually use them and iterate in days rather than months. Doing that inside a partner's app means you can’t really take that risk and iterate with speed,” he said.
He also said learnings from working partner apps demonstrated an appetite for the consumer service and that the “consumer marketing playbook has changed.”
“AI has rewritten the long-tail content economics, social and content production at scale is now genuinely viable for a small team and the rules for being found are shifting from classic SEO to generative engine optimization GEO,” Nigond said.
Touching on marketing opportunities, he said iWander can repurpose generated tours into short-form social content for platforms such as TikTok. Nigond added that the company has had some success with AI search experiments and is now looking to scale the channel.
The iOS app offers a number of ways to explore a destination from tapping other start a walking tour or uncovering curated stories from a specific location to using the phone camera to scan a building and ask a question.
iWander helped City Sightseeing develop an AI-powered app recently offering an AI assistant, AI-guided walking tours and an AI commerce engine. Nigond said learnings from the partnership include data showing where users go after a bus tour, what they click on and what they ask.
He said the data provides City Sightseeing with increased visibility around customers and can help inform route design.