INTERVIEW
Neil Henderson Founder of The Virtual Tour Experts
When Greater Anglia launched the UK's first interactive 360° virtual tour of a train station in 2020, it marked a quiet revolution in how passengers (particularly those with accessibility needs) plan their rail journeys. Five years on, The Virtual Tour Experts has created tours for over 60 stations across four major train operating companies, pioneering innovations from real-time data integration to AI-powered navigation. It is currently exploring adding these tours to in-station kiosks to support passengers with more relevant and precise wayfinding and station information.
Sam Sherwood-Hale spoke to Neil Henderson, founder of The Virtual Tour Experts, about how interactive 360° virtual tours are transforming rail accessibility, the company's pioneering work with train operating companies across the UK, and why planning tools are just as important as wayfinding for passengers with accessibility needs SSH: You started The Virtual Tour Experts to help people access spaces they couldn't physically visit. How did that idea evolve into becoming a go-to provider for UK rail accessibility? NH: We launched in 2011 as a web marketing and design agency. Virtual tours weren't new, but around six or seven years ago, just before Covid, we noticed something: most tours were just visual walkthroughs with no extra information, no ability to interact or personalise the experience. At the same time, we were approached by several universities who had a common problem. They'd created virtual tours to showcase their campuses, but ironically, those tours weren't digitally accessible. People using screen readers and other assistive technologies couldn't use them. The same barriers people face in the physical world existed in the digital world too. That's where our product began. My wife works with the BSL community and works with people with additional needs, so accessibility has always been close to home for us. Around five years ago, Greater Anglia reached out. They wanted better ways to prepare their passengers for journeys, give them planning tools, and reduce travel anxiety. They looked at various solutions, created a tender, and we worked with them on what became the first of these virtual tours. The feedback was brilliant, and the product has continually evolved since then. SSH: For readers who might not be familiar with The Virtual Tour Experts, can you give us the elevator pitch – what you do, where you're based, and the scale you're operating at now? 56