Isle company offering GPS driving tours eyes mainland

A recent Brigham Young University-Hawaii graduate whose company provides GPS-guided driving tours to Hawaii visitors using rental cars said his success has spurred him to consider expanding the service to the mainland.

Andrew Fowers, a 2008 graduate of BYUH, founded Digital Tours Hawaii LLC while in college using $9,000 in seed capital that he won by participating in business plan competitions at the school.

The locally produced audio tours include content similar to a bus tour, including information on history, culture and entertainment options. The service uses Global Positioning Satellite devices in the vehicles to automatically play a two- to three-minute narration according to a driver’s location.

After working with rental car companies to refine the service in Hawaii, Fowers said he was looking at the possibility of expanding to Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami.

"The car companies are using it to combat declining GPS rentals," he said. "Their tracking numbers show that it’s significantly increased GPS usage," said Fowers, 28.

Dollar Thrifty Rent-A-Car, one of the companies that Fowers works with in Hawaii, charges drivers $12.95 a day to add a GPS unit to their rental contract. Dollar Thrifty boosted its inventory of GPS units as a result of increased demand by customers seeking the service, he said.

Fowers launched the GPS Driving Tours service in 2009 on Oahu with Dollar Thrifty as his partner. He expanded to Hawaii island in 2010 and Maui in 2011. On Thursday the service became available on Kauai.

GPS Driving Tours was offered by Avis and Budget last year, and Fowers said he is in negotiations with Enterprise Holdings to use the service in its Enterprise, Alamo and National brands. The service is available in English, Japa­nese and Korean and will soon be available in Chinese, he said.

The service covers more than two dozen points of interest on Oahu, including Pearl Harbor, Dole Plantation, the King Kamehameha statue, Pali Lookout, Sea Life Park and Queen Emma’s Palace. The "total tour" is advertised as an 80-minute excursion.

"The GPS Driving Tours are perfect for the free independent travelers. It literally is like having a local tour gude in the rental car with visitors," the company says in its promotional materials.

On the Big Island, tour providers such as JTB Hawaii and JTB Global have adopted GPS Driving Tours as a part of their offerings for Japa­nese and Korean visitors, Fowers said.

Fowers worked with an agency to hire professional announcers whose voices are used for the narrations. He majored in accounting and taught himself how to do the computer programming necessary to create the applications that are installed onto the GPS devices.