Recommend Local Narrators for our Airbnb Audio Walks!

Andrew Mason
Detour Blog
Published in
1 min readNov 17, 2016

Airbnb, in partnership with Detour, is launching a project to create immersive audio walks that document the rich and diverse people and places of its communities.

To narrate each walk, we look for locals with a strong personal connection to and/or story about the place that can help listeners appreciate what makes it special.

Know someone who would make a great narrator? Send us a tip.

Think you would make a great narrator? Complete our casting call.

Who makes a good narrator?

Narrators must meet two requirements. First, they need an authentic connection to the place. Second, they need to tell a great story — and sound natural delivering it on tape. Below are some examples.

This walk through San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood is narrated by a series of locals who have lived their for years.
Peter Coyote, narrator of our Haight Ashbury Tour in San Francisco, was part of the Diggers, a prominent group in the Summer of Love.
This walk through Fisherman’s Wharf is San Francisco is primarily narrated by Mike “Candy” Mitchell, a fisherman who has been working the Wharf for over thirty years.
Cleve Jones narrates our tour of the Castro. He was close to Harvey Milk and remains a prominent local gay rights activist.

What cities/neighborhoods are you looking for?

While we’re looking for great narrators in all cities, we’re in most urgent need of narrators in the following cities and neighborhoods, where we currently have tours in production:

  • Los Angeles: Downtown, Hollywood, Silverlake, Mid Wilshire, Koreatown
  • San Francisco: Castro, The Richmond, Bayview, Nopa, Bernal Heights, Noe Valley
  • London: Anywhere, but especially Soho, Southward, Shoreditch, Waltham Forest
  • Paris: Republique, Buttte-aux-Cailles, Monmartre, Buttes Chaumont Belleville
  • Tokyo: Shibuya (Nakemeguro/Daikonyama), Gaien Mae (Omotesando/Harajuku), Nakano (Shinjuku adjacent), Ueno/Okachimachi
  • Seoul: Hongdae, Garosugii/Serosugii, Sungsu-don, Seochan

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