Prominent among the myriad forms and functions of multimedia storytelling is the tour. Tours themselves can take a variety of forms and serve many purposes. But you can probably envision the basic tour formula: a series of locations, featured in sequence, with text description, one or more images (or videos and, occasionally, audio), and a locator map. Tours might document a walk, they might guide people along a trail, they might describe a scenic drive, or they might sum up an entire vacation or expedition.
The immersive blocks within the ArcGIS StoryMaps builder give authors a number of options for presenting tours in a variety of formats. I’ve created an instructional story called Six Scottish hikes, six tour formats as a lesson in telling tour tales.
![](https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Scottish-cover.jpg)
The obvious immersive of choice for presenting a tour is the Map tour block. Within it are four layout options (diagrammed below), three of which I feature in the story (red numbered bullets indicate the order in which I present them). Within the builder you can access these options via a series of simple choices you’re asked to make after you click on Map tour.
![](https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Tour-options.jpg)
Map tour, however, isn’t your sole option. The Sidecar immersive can be just as effective as a way of describing a tour, and Slideshow nearly so. In the Scotland story I experiment with both sidecar layouts—Floating panel and Docked panel—and the single Slideshow layout.
![](https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Sidecar-options.jpg)
No need to go into additional detail here. Please peruse the story, and note that the white text describes the outings themselves, while italicized, yellow text describes layouts and techniques. I hope you find this tour of tours to be useful and instructive.
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