Online Campus Tour Gigs Stoke Disagreement

With the pandemic curtailing travel and in-person campus tours, virtual campus tours surged in popularity last year -- but not all colleges welcome third-party operators enlisting students as guides.

LiveCampusTours, founded in 2020, offers unofficial virtual tours of around 175 colleges and universities. More than 20 institutions have sent the company cease-and-desist letters asking it to stop operating on their turf. But the company's leaders don't see why they should.

“We don’t think that we’re doing anything wrong,” said Seth Kugel, co-founder of LiveCampusTours.

Originally Kugel, who is a travel writer, wanted the company to take housebound would-be globetrotters to faraway travel destinations. But he realized college campus tours represented a potentially lucrative market. The company has now recruited around 400 students to show high schoolers around their campuses through videoconference calls.

Tours typically cost $39 for an hour, with tour guides receiving $20, Kugel said. For prospective students from low-income backgrounds, that fee is reduced or waived completely, he said.

The traditional college tour, with students walking backward while they tell a large group about the history of their campus, can be boring, heavily scripted and impersonal, Kugel said. Tours from LiveCampusTours are more like the experience you might get if you call up a friend of a friend to tell you about their student experience.

Giving prospective students that personalized access to an institution's grounds was important to Madison Sanders, a senior at the University of Pennsylvania who has been working for LiveCampusTours for the past month.

“Not everybody has the same access to an institution, particularly if it’s an Ivy League,” she said.

Sanders applied to become a tour guide through a job advertisement on Indeed, a website for job listings. Though the work is sporadic, she likes that she is in complete control of her schedule, and the pay is better than some campus jobs, she said.

But not everyone likes the service quite so much. Some institutions have demanded that the company cease unauthorized operations on their premises.

At the bottom of its website, the company states that Nylie Inc., doing business as LiveCampusTours, "is not affiliated with the administration of any school or educational institution. Our goal is to provide services that may be useful to students considering that school."

Many cease-and-desist letters that colleges and universities sent the company cite concerns about copyright infringement -- namely the unauthorized use of the university name to advertise unauthorized services.

Some campuses cited policies against soliciting on campus or referred to rules that prohibit students from starting businesses on campus. Some institutions, such as the University of Dayton, threatened to discipline individual students who conducted tours.

Several institutions pointed out that they already offer virtual tours free of charge and did not want students to mistakenly pay for a service in which the university is not involved.

In many cases, LiveCampusTours has been able to alleviate concerns by meeting via Zoom with campus administrators and admissions staff, Kugel said. If an institution makes a reasonable request, such as removing pictures of students wearing branded clothing, the company will honor it. A handful of institutions are discussing collaborating with the company. None of those that threatened legal action have so far followed through on their threats, said Kugel.

Representatives for Chapman University and West Virginia University said they have asked for their institutions to be removed from the LiveCampusTours website, as they would prefer only their official tour guides give campus tours, but the company has not complied. Some institutions, including Rollins College and Florida Southern College, reported that the company had removed their names from the website.

At the University of Central Florida, campus leaders have grudgingly accepted the presence of LiveCampusTours on campus.

“We appreciate this company’s entrepreneurial spirit and the enthusiasm of their student guides,” said Mark Schleub, director of strategic communications for Central Florida. “However, enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily equal knowledge.”

Students who lead official tours at UCF are trained to have a breadth of knowledge about the university and all the subjects it offers, said Schleub.

“Our concern is that prospective students may mistakenly believe they’re talking with an official tour guide trained by the university,” said Schleub. An unofficial guide might be able to share where to get the best burgers on campus, but “will they be able to answer questions about class sizes, financial aid and the quality of our engineering programs?” Schleub said.

After discussions with LiveCampusTours, Schleub said that Central Florida has accepted that the company will keep operating, as long as it makes very clear it is not affiliated with or endorsed by the university.

Not all institutions are satisfied with LiveCampusTours' response to their concerns.

"Their reply to our concerns was completely inadequate," a spokesperson at Muhlenberg College said. "We have not taken further legal action but have not ruled it out."

Brand Sensitivity

Institutions may struggle to win a lawsuit against LiveCampusTours, said Jacob Rooksby, dean of the Gonzaga University School of Law and professor of law and leadership studies who wrote the 2016 book The Branding of the American Mind.

“The intellectual property angle is weak -- students are creating the videos themselves, so there is no copyright concern by the institution, and the disclaimer on the website should adequately prevent any consumer confusion, which is what trademark law is all about,” Rooksby said in an email.

Universities attempting to stop the company from operating tours of their campuses is “another unfortunate example of institutions being hypersensitive about their brands and hoping to control as much speech about their institutions as possible, including student speech,” Rooksby said.

Trying to limit what students can and can’t say about their institutions is a potentially dangerous road to go down, Rooksby said. He doesn't think universities will be able to stop the tours legally, and they might face public relations consequences if they try, he said.

Campus tours are the single most effective way to convert prospects into students, said Bob Brock, president of the Educational Marketing Group, a company that develops branding and marketing strategies for a range of organizations including K-12 and higher education institutions.

Virtual tours have been around for a long time but found new relevance because of COVID-19 and limitations on travel, Brock said in an email. YouVisit, a company that creates virtual tours and interactive content for higher education institutions, was founded in 2009 and acquired by educational services company EAB in 2019. CampusTours, another company that creates virtual tours and interactive campus maps for colleges, was founded in 1997. Unlike LiveCampusTours, these companies provide paid services to institutions, meaning all their content is carefully vetted.

The pandemic has elevated interactive maps and virtual campus tours from nice-to-haves to “absolutely critical website elements,” said Chris Carson, president and founder of CampusTours, in an email. The company’s website traffic tripled in the wake of COVID-19 crisis.

Interactive maps, guided slideshows, interactive video tours and even virtual reality tour experiences are all popular, Carson said. One of the largest areas of growth for his company has been in high-fidelity campus maps that combine illustration with photos and information on individual buildings.

Many campuses have started adding prerecorded student commentary to virtual tours to incorporate student perspectives and inject some personality. But the live one-on-one approach offered by LiveCampusTours has not been widely adopted.

“Utilizing technology to offer a personal virtual tour by individual students is a creative way to convey an authentic student viewpoint of the campus,” Brock said. “The same thing is happening with virtual tours in the real estate market today. Virtual tours give consumers the ability to get a real feel for the campus and build an emotional response to the environment and its offerings.”

Some risk is associated with students being paid to give tours by an organization not affiliated with a university, Brock said.

“Will the presentations be accurate?” he asked. “Are the presenters positive representatives of the university? Will less savory aspects of campus or academic life be included or overplayed?”

Issuing a cease-and-desist letter "smacks of wishful thinking for a bygone era," when it was much easier for institutions to closely control messaging about their brand, Brock said.

“That’s no longer the case in today’s social media environment, and fighting it is not likely to be productive,” Brock said.

Students have been posting videos about their campus experiences -- both positive and negative -- for years, Brock said.

“Having current students conduct virtual tours is really an extension of the social media influencer trend in which students or alumni post their authentic and uncensored thoughts about their campus and/or alma mater on social media platforms,” Brock said. “The authentic, unfiltered voice is often the most compelling.”

It may be more productive to try and work in collaboration with third-party organizations than against them, Brock said. It’s an opportunity for a university to put itself in front of students. But Brock would not advise campuses to rely on or promote campus tours that can't be vetted.

For LiveCampusTours, the fact that the company is unofficial is a selling point, said its co-founder, Kugel. That said, the company would be willing to partner with an institution if it could ensure that student guides are still able to speak freely about their experiences.