Issues for Hearing Impaired Travelers

May 22, 2026
Mike and Judy Henderson

When you travel with a group, it is common for the tour company to use some equipment that sends the tour guide's voice to the members of the tour group.  This has the advantage of allowing the tour guide to speak in a low voice but still be heard by all the members of the tour group.  For people with relatively normal hearing, this system works well.

But for those of us with a serious hearing impairment, most of these systems are unusable.  I'll discuss some of the systems and the problems encountered by hearing impaired people.

VOX Type Systems

I use VOX as an example because that's what Tauck uses and I'm fairly familiar with it.  There are other brands that do the same thing. The VOX system has a transmitter unit, with a microphone, that the tour guide uses.  The transmitter can be set to transmit at a specific frequency, which they call a "channel", and the receiving units (used by the members of the tour group) can be set to receive that specific frequency.

You can think of it as similar to an AM radio station that broadcasts on a specific frequency.  The listeners need to adjust their radio to that frequency so that they can hear what is being transmitted (music and/or voice).  Because the VOX can operate on different frequencies, many tour guides can use the equipment at the same location, as long as they use different frequencies (channels).

The problem for hearing impaired people is in the ear pieces provided to the members of the tour group.  There are two types of ear pieces.

One type plugs into the ear canal, providing sound directly into the ear, like the one in the following picture.

  The other type is set up to go over the ear and has a small "speaker" in the middle of the ear, sending sound directly into the ear canal.

The problem for hearing impaired people (who wear over-the-ear hearing aids) is that the microphone for the hearing aid is at the top of the ear, shown by the arrow. 

You may say, "Well, just remove the hearing aid and plug the ear piece directly into the ear and turn the volume up."  The problem is that hearing loss is not linear.  Most of us lose our high frequency hearing compared the low frequency.  So if we turn the volume up, we hear a lot of the low frequency sound but little of the high frequency.  We just can't understand the speech.  The hearing aid amplifies the higher frequencies more than the lower frequencies so that what the user hears is essentially a flat frequency curve - it is equalized to the specific hearing loss of the user.

What's needed is a "cup-like" device that covers the ear so that the sound gets to the microphone of the hearing aid, where the high frequencies are amplified more than the low frequencies.  That provides sound to the hearing impaired which is close to what a person with normal hearing would hear with a similar headset.  But any headset is not as good as the sound directly in your ears, as would be the case if the sound came through your hearing aids.  [Bluetooth hearing aids allowed me to be able to use a telephone.  Prior to that, I'd hand my smartphone to my wife and she would relay the conversation to me.]

What would be ideal is a headset with large earphones, similar to what is done with high end headsets.  Something like this:

The difference is that only one ear should be covered, not two as is normal for high fidelity headsets.  If both ears were covered, you would not be able to hear any outside sounds (or outside speech).  If I had a headset that covered both ears, I'd have to pull one side back to converse with my wife.  She'd have to poke me to indicate she wanted to say something.

Silversea System

I call this the "Silversea System" because that's where I first encountered it.  It's actually the itour Smart Guide.  This system has certain advantages for the hearing impaired but has other disadvantages.

It requires that the members of the tour each have a smartphone, with wired or wireless earbuds (such as Apple's AirPods) and download the itour app.  Those of us with hearing aids with Bluetooth essentially have wireless earbuds.

The tour guide carries a transmit unit that creates a portable Wi-Fi network and each of the members of the tour must connect their smartphone to that Wi-Fi network.  This basically connects the itour app to the tour guide's unit.  Then, within the app, there are multiple channels that can be used.  The tour guide tells the members what channel to use and then the tour guide's voice is transmitted directly into the member's ears.

For those of us who use hearing aids, this works great.

But now the downsides:

1.  Every member of the tour has to have a smartphone and earbuds.  I don't know what the tour company does if someone just doesn't use a smartphone.

2. Since the smartphone is connected to the Wi-Fi of the tour guide, the smartphone thinks that it has Internet access through that Wi-Fi. But since the tour guide generally will not have Internet access to their transmitting unit, the members of the group will lose their Internet access, even if they have a data plan with their wireless provider.  The smartphone will keep trying to access the Internet through the Wi-Fi.  If a member of the group needs Internet access, they must disconnect from the Wi-Fi, which means they can no longer hear the tour guide.

But overall, for the hearing impaired, this is a very good system.

Bluetooth in the VOX Units 

Tauck claims that they are working with VOX to put Bluetooth in their units.  For people with normal hearing, those members of the tour group will be able to use earbuds, such as AirPods, to connect to the VOX unit, instead of using the earpieces that have traditionally been supplied with the VOX units.

But for the hearing impaired, things are a bit different.  Most hearing aids do not implement standard Bluetooth (sometimes referred to as Bluetooth Classic), but implement Bluetooth LE (for Low Energy).  A device that implements Bluetooth LE will not connect to Bluetooth Classic.

Tauck's position on this was that the hearing aid wearer would have to purchase and carry an "interface" device that would connect to the hearing aids with Bluetooth LE, and then generate Bluetooth Classic to connect to the VOX unit.  This is impractical or difficult for a couple of reasons:

1.  Most people who wear hearing aids do not have such an interface device.

2.  I do have an Oticon Connectclip interface device and tried to use it on one of the tours.  Here's what I had to go through.

   a.  When I arrive at the tour location I turn on the Connectclip device, and then turn off my hearing aids because they only try to pair when first powered on. 

   b.  I then turn on my hearing aids and attempt to pair them to the Connectclip device.  Assume I do this okay.   In reading the documentation, I think I could connect the hearing aids to the Connectclip ahead of time and skip steps "a" and "b" at the tour site, which would make things easier.

   c.  Next I have to pair the Connectclip to the Bluetooth Classic (I used a Bluetooth "dongle" that I plugged into the VOX unit).  If I'm successful, I can now hear the tour guide. 

When I did this test, I was under the assumption that I had to disconnect the hearing aids from the iPhone.  Since then, I've found that my Oticon hearing aids can maintain a connection to the iPhone as well as the Connectclip.  This is an advantage because when I turn the Connectclip off, everything goes back to normal.

The operation was not very successful in my test with the VOX unit - I could not hear the tour guide very well.  But perhaps with additional knowledge and testing it would work better.

So, by using an interface device (in my case, the Connectclip), I could connect to a VOX unit that implemented Bluetooth Classic.  But this is only one version of an interface device.  Other brands of hearing aids will have their own interface devices, and each will work differently and the tour member will have to know how to use the device. 

It will be extremely difficult for a Tour Guide (or Tour Director) to assist the tour members in getting properly connected with an interface device with all the different brands of hearing aids.  It's just impossible for the Tour Directors to know what buttons need to be pushed to set up an interface device to connect to Bluetooth Classic, on every brand of interface devices.  I usually have to look in the manual how to set mine up because I don't do it very often.

Hearing Aids with Bluetooth Classic

Some good news is that a few hearing aid companies are implementing Bluetooth Classic in their hearing aids.  Two brands that implement Bluetooth Classic, today, are Sennheiser and Phonak.  I'm in the process of purchasing a set of Sennheiser hearing aids with Bluetooth Classic so that I can hear what the tour guide is saying.

Having hearing aids that implement Bluetooth Classic means they can be treated essentially the same as AirPods for connection to a Bluetooth transmitter - such as a VOX unit that implements Bluetooth Classic.  The process would be as follows:

1.  Turn off Bluetooth on my iPhone to disconnect the hearing aids from my iPhone.  Note that this does not work with Bluetooth LE.  Turning off Bluetooth on the iPhone does not turn off the Bluetooth LE.  I suppose the iPhone designers chose not to cut off the hearing aids from being used - such as to receive a phone call - even if Bluetooth is turned off.

2.  If the VOX unit has to be put into "search" mode to pair, do that now.  Until Bluetooth is put into the VOX unit, I'll use an adapter that plugs into the audio jack of the VOX.  Here's a picture of a couple of those audio to Bluetooth adapters that I have.

3.  Turn off the hearing aids and then turn them back on because they only go into pairing mode after being turned on.  Assuming the pairing goes okay, I'm connected to the VOX unit.  Most hearing aids will allow you to hear outside sounds as well as the sound through the Bluetooth connection.

This is fairly close to the process you'd go through to connect AirPods to the VOX unit.

The BIG negative to this approach is that the group member must have hearing aids that implement Bluetooth Classic.  Over time I expect more hearing aid companies will offer hearing aids with Bluetooth Classic but it will be years before most group members who wear hearing aids have this kind of hearing aids.

My plan is to keep using the hearing aids I presently have and take the aids that implement Bluetooth Classic with me specifically for tours.  Buying a "backup" set of hearing aids is not cheap.  At Costco, which has the lowest prices for hearing aids, the hearing aids with Bluetooth Classic cost $1,600.  That's a lot more than AirPods, which are about $250.  [I tried the hearing aid function in AirPods but they will not work with my severe hearing loss.  They will only work for moderate hearing loss.]

But I'm tired of missing everything the tour guide says.  My wife tries to relay the most important things the tour guide says, but it's obviously just a small part of the dialog.

Summary

The best approach for Tauck is to implement Bluetooth Classic in the VOX units and provide special headsets for hearing aid users with a earpiece that covers the entire ear so the sound gets to the hearing aid.

In the long run, the need for those special headsets will decline as more hearing aid users purchase aids that implement Bluetooth Classic and are able to directly connect to the VOX unit.

Other Note

I've traveled with Tauck for a good many years.  After just about every tour, I'd email them about the problem of using the VOX earpieces for hearing impaired people with over-the-ear hearing aids.  Nothing is ever done.

I hope one of these days Tauck will address this problem.  Their customers tend to skew older and many of them wear over-the-ear hearing aids.  It's time for Tauck to address this problem.