Have a look at SmartGuide’s newest videos about the breathtaking Panorama Route in South Africa. They have been loaded onto our Interactive Travel Guide:
The Panorama Route is one of the most beautiful and popular travel destinations in South Africa. It’s best known for its cultural heritage and its dramatic landscapes. The route includs the world famous Blyde River Canyon, Bourke’s Luck Potholes and God’s Window and a lot of breathtaking waterfalls.
Panorama Route Video
The Panorama Route takes you to all the highlights of the MpumalangaDrakensberg, winding along dramatic passes, past beautiful waterfalls, montane forests, spectacular vistas, the world’s largest green canyon, God’s Window, a living museum town, some lucky potholes and plenty of adventure.
Blyde River Canyon Video
The Blyde River Canyon is with its length of 25km the 3rdlargest canyon in the world. The Canyon’s most well known features are the Three Rondavels, three peaks which look like traditional African huts and the rather strange Kadishi Tufa waterfall, which grows rather than erodes the rock.
Panorama Waterfalls Video
The Panorama Route has a number of breathtaking waterfalls. The big ones are Berlin Falls, Lisbon Falls, Lone Creek, Bridal Veil falls and Mac Mac Falls.
If you would like to see more videos about Mpumalange and the Panorama Route, please browse onto our YouTube Channel.
SmartGuide recently developed a lot of new videos of KwaZulu Natal that have been loaded onto our Interactive Travel Guide:
KwaZulu Natal Video – Interactive Travel Guide
From the towering magnificence of the Ukahlamba-Drakensberg Mountain range to miles and miles of coastline with sea temperatures that offer year round swimming; from the Lake St Lucia World Heritage Site to the varied and challenging golf courses, and the cultural richness of the Zulus and South Africa’s Indian population; from the battlefields of the Anglo Zulu and Anglo Boer Wars to world renowned conservation parks of Zululand KwaZulu Natal has something to offer everybody.
Aliwal Shoal Diving Video – Interactive Travel Guide
The water on KwaZulu Natal’s South Coast is warm all year round, home to the most wondrous kingdom of the deep and has some of the world’s most exciting dive spots to offer.
Such as the Aliwal Shoal, a fossilized sand dune quoted as being one of the top ten dive sites in the World, where you can dive with Ragged Tooth Sharks, Tiger Sharks and Manta Rays, Dolphins and Whale Sharks. Just eight kilometers of Shelly Beach is Protea Banks, a deep dive full of caves, pinnacles, ridges and amphitheatres and densely populated with colorful soft corals, sea weed and reef fish.
Blue Flag Beaches Video – Interactive Travel Guide
The Blue Flag certification is an international award for beaches that maintain cleanliness, security and most importantly environmental awareness. To date 20 Blue Flag beaches on South Africa’s coastline have earned this international award. Five of which are on the South Coast: Unvongo, Hibberdene, Ramsgate, Marina Beach, Lucien Beach and with two pilot Blue Flag beaches Margate and Scottsburgh.
Please browse onto our YouTube Channel to see more KwaZulu Natal and South Africa video.
Below is an extract from an article by Neil Salerno which discusses the decision process a person looking to book a hotel goes through. The decision of where to stay is secondary to that of the destination and location so accommodation establishments need to first help sell the destination and location before a traveler will book at their establishment. The SmartGuide Interactive Travel Guide that can be embedded into websites, emailed, distributed via social media is essentially an interactive destination guide loaded with the necessary information and rich media to help sell you destination.
“I referred to some hotel sites as nothing more than online brochures. A hotel online brochure is a site, which only covers information about the hotel itself; that makes it dead-in-the-water from a search standpoint. Someone who designs such a site, doesn’t understand how travelers use the Internet to find and book rooms.
Few people choose a hotel before choosing a destination. The fact is that most travelers first select a destination, attraction, or activity, then select a hotel within the scope of that destination. Hotel online brochures mention little, if any, information about the destination features nearby. Yet, this is the most important search findability information on your site. Selecting a hotel is most often the “second” decision made by travelers.”
We came across an interesting article on the internet highlighting the importance of content – herewith is an extract from it….
The survey suggests that consumers are showing an appetite for more interactive visuals in their shopping and purchase paths. Nearly three in five online travelers (59 percent) say 360 degree virtual tours would be “useful” or “very useful” in helping them select a hotel that matches their preferences and expectations, while nearly half (48%) believe a short video showing a property’s features and amenities would be “useful” or “very useful.”
“We know price and location play the most important role in consumer shopping behavior and decision making, but we were particularly intrigued to see that factors such as loyalty programs and hotel brand were rated so far behind visuals in importance by online travelers,” said Paolo Boni, president and CEO of VFM Interactive, which commissioned the study. “With still image and rich media visualsrated so highly on consumers’ importance and usefulness scales for influencing their selection of one hotel over another online, hoteliers should re-evaluate their online presence – particularly how they are being represented through online travel agency sites — to address the lower consumer satisfaction visuals found online today.
The Birchwood Hotel and Conference Centre is situated very close to the OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg and the perfect place to hold a national conference as it allows you to avoid the notoriously bad Johannesburg traffic.
SmartGuide has just loaded the Birchwood’s content into their Interactive Travel Guide. This provides a wonderful spatial understanding of the complex and its location and the interactive map can now used as a virtual hotel guide. Click here or on the image below to activate the Birchwood interactive Map.
For more example of the Interactive Travel Guide see below:
To successfully market on the Internet you must have good content and then distribute it effectively – this is the essence of e-Marketing.
Importance of the Internet
The internet is the most important marketing channel in tourism; it is flexible, quick, engaging and allows your content to be distributed cheaply and widely to a massive audience.
Facts:
- Tourism is the largest selling commodity on the Internet
- more than 50% of the tourism spend in Europe is done over the Internet
- More than 70% of travelers start their travel plans on the Internet
- The Internet is becoming a more visual medium (Show, don’t Tell)
The Internet is continually becoming a more important business channel – if you do not have a plan to market to this channel then you need to develop one quickly.
Importance of Rich Media
The old saying ‘ Content is King ‘ is even more appropriate on the Internet. With a massive selection available on the Internet, content must be interesting, engaging and preferably interactive otherwise the visitor will simply move on.
Tourism organizations / businesses should invest the following forms of multimedia or content:-
Text – good at relaying basic info
Audio – excellent for stories, interviews , etc
Images – attract attention, emotive & provide credibility
Video – powerful as it conveys images and info quickly and effectively
Virtual Tours – brilliant at providing detailed information and credibility
Interactive Maps – provides spatial understanding of location/ destination
”Content is not just king, it is the emperor of all things digital.” Rupert Murdoch
Importance of Distribution
You can have the best content however if it is not well distributed then it only has limited use and will not generate business. You should develop a comprehensive plan for distributing you content that involves the following channels:-
- Website
- Blogs (yours and other peoples)
- E-Newsletters
- Social Media
- Emails
- Documents
- Via Agents
So to successfully market on the Internet you need to accept the growing importance of this channel and adapt your marketing strategy accordingly. Most importantly develop great content and have a plan to distribute it – this way you will get a great return on investment on the development of your content.
Good luck and go for it – the longer you wait the further you get left behind!!
Wilderness Safari’s Pafuri Camp in the north of the Kruger National Park provides an amazing experience in a truly unique environment. SmartGuide has loaded their content into their Interactive Travel Guide to provide you with a better spatial understanding of the area together with content embedded into it to wet your appetite.
Click here to access the online version on SmartGuide's Interactive Map.
The SmartGuide interactive tourist map provides the property with an interactive e-Brochure in which the content is easily navigated, accessible and able to engage the users. Most importantly this interactive map can be embedded into websites, attached to emails, inserted into blogs and most importantly easily distributed via social media. In short, it is e-Brochure that can engage the user and can be distributed very widely to help sell your property.
If you would like your product’s contents uploaded into the interactive map please contact SmartGuide.
The SmartGuide Interactive Travel Guide can be easily distributed via your emails. Once you have loaded your content (text, images, virtual tours, videos, etc) into the interactive map it acts as an excellent interactive e-brochure that is able to help sell your product, your location and the destination.
It takes one click to activate the map which provides the user with a vast amount of interactive content that is easily navigated.
By linking the Interactive Travel Guide to your emails you are distributing a powerful marketing tool that will help educate your potential clients about your product and the surroundings.
Here are a few examples of how to link the Interactive Travel Guide to your emails:
1. Link it to your Personal Email Signature
2. Insert a link in the body of your Email
With the Interactive Travel Guide linked to your emails you are marketing every time you send an email or the email is forwarded
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Facebook has become a valuable element in many tourism related businesses’ marketing efforts. The SmartGuide Interactive Travel Guide can be embedded into Facebook allowing visitors to a Facebook page the ability to interact with the interactive map. This essentially allows you to place an interactive destination guide that will help sell the destination or product within the destination.
SmartGuide recently spent time along the Garden Route gathering information. We took some 360 degree virtual tours (360 degree images) to place on our Interactive Travel Guide courtesy of Virtual Africa’s new distribution platform that allows you to distribute your virtual tours to a wider audience.
Knysna: The Hippo Beach
Plettenberg Bay: The Viewpoint 1
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words well then…
What then is a video with words worth or a virtual worth?
As the Internet becomes a more visual tool and people take a ‘show me don’t tell me’ approach, the use of rich media is becoming more and more important in the competitive online tourism arena.
So don’t hang around – invest in rich content now. And if you do not know where to start contact us and we will give you the options.
