Elio Epifani, Founder of Vox Group, in Rome, where the company was founded 25 years ago. Credit: Vox Group
The Vox Group logo. Credit: Vox Group.
Vox Group turns 25: from the first radio system for guides to Aura, AI-powered guiding in 200 languages, live subtitles, and parallel channels in over 150 countries.
ROME, ITALY, September 24, 2026 / EINPresswire.com / -- Twenty-five years ago, Elio Epifani built a device that the travel industry laughed at. Today, Vox Group celebrates a quarter century of
changing the way groups travel, and presents the biggest update to Aura , its AI-powered guiding platform, now available in 200 languages.It started with a laugh.
In 2001, Elio Epifani was a tour director earning a thousand euros a day, the kind of money you can't pass up in the industry. He gave it up anyway, with a van and a box of radios, to solve a problem no one had asked him to solve.
"They laughed," Epifani recalls. "Tour operators told me I was crazy: why would anyone pay for a radio when a guide can just raise their voice?" The idea was simple: a guide who speaks only once and is clearly heard by the entire group. It took a reservation at the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, where guides aren't allowed to raise their voices, to prove it. "Suddenly, no one was laughing anymore," he says. "You don't convince people with arguments. You convince them with a problem they can't solve any other way."
Twenty-five years later, that same radio link operates in over 150 countries and supports tours for cruise lines, tour operators, DMCs, and destination experience partners worldwide. What was once one man's answer to a problem the industry had simply learned to live with has become the guiding infrastructure on which much of the tourism industry now runs.
A family business that has grown globally without changing shape,
Vox has done something that most family businesses can't: it has brought in the second generation without losing the way of working built by the first. "I choose very carefully who joins this company, and the family is no exception," says Epifani. "The family members who work here started on the ground floor, packing boxes and radios, and rose through the ranks like everyone else. What they have more than a new hire is time. You don't teach time in a meeting room: you absorb it."
The same belief, that a company's identity matters more than procedures, has also guided the way Vox has grown abroad. "You don't send a company's culture to another country in a document," Epifani explains. "It arrives with the people. Culture is what happens when the boss leaves the room. If the standards don't drop an inch when they're gone, we've done our job."
A new chapter
Vox's twenty-fifth anniversary has brought with it its most significant product evolution. Aura, originally designed as a real-time translation device, now manages simultaneous translation in up to four languages simultaneously, drawing on a library that has grown from 50 to 200. Added to this are real-time subtitles for deaf or hard-of-hearing guests and multiple parallel commentary channels within a single, diverse group. Its AI companion provides the guide with verified answers to guests' questions in real time, drawing on content approved by the operator and not the open internet. Alongside Aura is Vox BT , a new Bluetooth accessory that allows guests to connect their own headphones or hearing aids to the tour.
Epifani judges technology by the same yardstick he applied to the first radio. "If the guest notices the technology, you've failed," he says. "It should be like oxygen: indispensable, but invisible." When asked how this philosophy applies to artificial intelligence, he responds bluntly: "The question isn't what technology can do, but what it should do for your job. So we asked ourselves what would best benefit a guide, never what could replace one. A guide knows the subject better than any machine. What a guide can't do is be in four places at once."
What's coming next?
Epifani is direct about what has changed most since 2001. "Back then, there was me, a van, and a box of radios," he says. "Today, there are people in many countries who wake up every morning and care about this company as if it were their own. That's the part I could never have imagined." Regarding the
future of the sector, his prediction is clear: "In five years, the companies that will survive in tourism won't be those with the best prices. They will be those that manage the guest experience from start to finish. Technology will decide who leads and who follows." And when asked what he would like Vox to be in another twenty-five years, the answer is simple: "The company that proved that technology and humanity are not opposites. That you can build something global, innovative, and profitable without losing your soul."
Vox technology is used throughout the travel industry by tour operators, DMCs, cruise lines, museums, galleries, cultural sites, destination experience partners, and many others.
For more information: voxtours.com.
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