A Riding Navigation Masterclass from Ride with GPS

One of the best cycling quotes comes from Fausto Coppi, one of the greatest riders of cycling's post-war golden age. A simple quote, on the secret to being a great cyclist, he said "Ride your bike, ride your bike, ride your bike.” When it comes to planning a route for a Thomson trip, this is exactly what we do; alongside using our local knowledge and consulting with experts in the area, we ride the routes as much as possible, endlessly refining and tweaking them until they're ready to share with our guests.

This is of the hardest jobs at Thomson, and something we take the greatest pride in. It’s the key to our trips, to making sure that every twist and turn of every ride is as interesting, enjoyable and challenging as possible. When it comes to training in our local area, or communicating the routes to our guests, after thousands and thousands of miles of testing, we've found Ride with GPS to be leagues above the rest.

Thomson: For a Thomson guest on their dream ride through some stunning European cycling terrain, what makes Ride with GPS the ideal navigation platform?

Ride with GPS: It all starts with our fully-featured mobile app, and how that fits in with GPS head units. Firstly, the voice navigation in our mobile app keeps guests on-course, and alerts them should they stray off-course. Also, our elevation profile shows where the guests are in relation to their route, and particularly the climbs. You can also engage with the elevation profile and see what your estimated time is till you get to the top of a climb.

Speaking of estimated time, our mobile app also has multiple metrics to help riders know when they will arrive at various points, whether it’s the next turn ahead, or the end of their route. These metrics are constantly being updated using the rider’s current ride metrics for a pinpoint estimated arrival time. Generally with a 2-3 hour ride the estimated time to completion shown will be within 3-4 minutes of the actual arrival time. It’s pretty great!

It’s worth adding here that all of these features are available on our offline mode, with your phone in airplane mode. This is a huge value to guests, enabling them to download everything prior to their departure, then put their phone in airplane mode and not use any data while on tour.

Lastly, if you want to head off course to explore a little more and check out something that looks interesting, our QuickNav feature allows guests to long press anywhere on the map and instantly generate a route with turn by turn directions to it.

As for GPS devices, we have our full send-to-device functionality in the mobile app, enabling quick and easy wireless route syncing from your phone to your device. Or, if you just want to use GPX files, simply export them from our app and import them into the companion app of your device.

You mentioned that all the features are available offline; how does that work within the app?

Ride with GPS is built with travelling in mind, and we’re well aware that a lot of time, especially in more remote areas, it might not be possible to have constant online access, which is why everything is available offline! As long as you get everything download before you go away or on the Hotel wifi, maps, voice navigation, elevation profile, and metrics like estimated time are all available with your phone in airplane mode, giving guests that peace of mind, knowing they’ll be covered for the entirety of their trip.

It’s not always just about riding on a Thomson trip; we’re often going off-trail to visit unique points of interest and cultural landmarks. Does Ride with GPS account for that part of a Thomson trip?

Absolutely. A couple of great ways come to mind:

You could use our Points of Interest. Visual markers on the map to denote stops along your route, or interesting places guests should check out. You can also tap on them to see notes, photos, descriptions, and information like website and phone number.

Also there are Custom Cues, a feature unique to us. Just like when a route is planned turn by turn and instructions are generated, Thomson can add in their own points of interest, caution points, or simply where you’re stopping for lunch, and this will be added into the cue sheet, and read aloud to the rider.

Talking of caution points, safety is always a key concern for our more challenging mountain routes. How does Ride with GPS stand out with for rider safety?

Of course, safety is top of mind when we’re developing new features and integrations. The aforementioned voice navigation is top of the list, with the app audibly telling guests each turn so they don’t have to constantly be looking down at a screen the whole time.

This, along with maps and elevation profiles, are all available offline in airplane mode, ensuring guests don’t have to worry about battery life on their phone. Even our global heatmap is now available offline, enabling guests to see where locals ride to ensure they take the safest route if they are riding off course or exploring new locations.

If using cell data isn’t an issue, a rider can provide real-time tracking to friends and family, using our live logging feature in the mobile app. It will even display photos geo-tagged to the exact location they were taken, along with displaying estimated time for anyone watching the guest’s progress.

We know that riders love to capture and share their epic journeys. Does Ride with GPS make it easy for riders to share their achievements?

Naturally, sometimes if there isn’t a picture at the top of the climb, did you really conquer it?! While guests are navigating, they are also recording their ride which will get saved so they can share it when they are done. If they take photos while riding, those photos will be geotagged to the exact location they were taken, letting folks they share with get a visual look into what their ride was actually like. We even have a blogging feature where guests can create ride reports to show off anything they want. Reading these reports from friends is one of my favourite parts of working for Ride with GPS, seeing the adventures that we’re brought along for.

With technology constantly evolving, what new tools or features are on the way at Ride with GPS?

We have some pretty cool ideas we’re exploring right now. A couple specific ones come to mind:

A more interactive elevation profile. We’re looking at improvements to include more grade functionality into the elevation profile so guests can get a more exact description of what lies ahead. We’re also looking to see how much of this we can automate. We don’t want to have guests always opening their phone screen, pushing a lot of buttons, just to get some info about an upcoming climb. We’d love for all of this to just happen automatically as the guest progresses along their route and always has the most relevant information in front of them without having to do anything.

Another key upcoming feature is Companion mode! There are plenty of guests that use their own GPS device while on tour, which is great. Our mobile app can be a wonderful partner or back up tool to GPS devices, but guests are sometimes concerned with data or battery life. So, we’re looking into simple navigation features with our app that run on less battery. It’s pretty common for riders to use a GPS device but still want and use the app’s voice navigation. Right now voice navigation requires recording the ride as well, so we’re looking at if we can get the guest voice navigation and elevation profile interaction without recording the ride (if the guest would like). Recording doesn’t consume a lot of battery, especially with the phone in airplane mode.

We’re constantly innovating, bringing the latest and best destinations to our guests. What’s in Ride with GPS’s future, how do you see that working for the next generation of bike tours?

We’re also always working on lots of ways to ensure our users experiences get better and better. More compatibility with GPS devices. More ways for Thomson to provide local information and visuals through digital itineraries. More ways for Thomson to communicate with guests while on tour, along with guests being able to communicate with each other. Adding as much offline functionality as we can. And making it all as easy as possible. We know guests can range from someone who has never used digital navigation, and perhaps not even ridden a bike very much, all the way to guests who have ridden for decades and may be on a tour conquering the world’s most epic climbs. And our job is to support all of them better than anyone else.

That’s what we do every single day, and love it.