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.”
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:
Kariega is an exclusive private game reserve in the Eastern Cape. SmartGuide has developed numerous internet friendly videos that will be loaded onto their online Interactive Travel Guide.
SmartGuide has produced many audio documentaries, lectures, stories and guides that can be downloaded from their website and placed on an MP3 player (PDA, mobile phone, GPS, iPod, etc). These guides have been developed for tourists visiting Southern Africa whom can download them and then listen to them at their leisure whether it be on the flight, while driving or lying in the sun next to the pool.
These downloads will give the listener more in-depth into South Africa and help them understand more about this wonderful region.
Some of the downloads include:-
Documenaries
• Nelson Mandela – An Audio History
• Day of the Dead Moon (David Rattray)
• Spioenkop to Versailles (Andrew Ardington)
Lectures / Stories
• Fireside Stories (Short Stories about South Africa)
• Story of the Bushman
• Introduction to Apartheid
• The African Big 5
• Brief History to South Africa
• Introduction to the Anglo Boer War
• Introduction to the Anglo Zulu War
• Introduction to Fynbos
Audio Guides
• Cape Town Guide
• Cape Town Activities Guide
• Cape Town Restaurant Guide
• Garden Route Guide
• Johannesburg Guide
• Sun City Guide
• Durban Guide
• Guide to Surfing in South Africa
• Guide to Game Viewing
• Guide to KwaZulu Natal
All these downloads are available for download from the SmartGuide website www.smartguide.co.za
Smartguide will be launching their Tourism Information Portal (TIP) at Indaba in Durban on May the 9th 2009.
The TIP has been developed on Google Maps in Silverlight and provides an intelligent interactive mapping platform on which tourism content can be placed.
Watch this short video to get a better idea of what this Interactive Guide to Southern Africa has to offer.
Anyone attending Indaba that wishes to find out more should come to stand K007 in Hall 3 in the ICC
SmartGuide is continually producing travel guide videos for the Tourism Information Portal – the online tourist guide of Southern Africa. These videos are also being placed on YouTube and people/ companies are welcome to embed them into their websites or blogs.
SmartGuide will officially launch their Tourism Information Portal (TIP for short) in Durban at Indaba, Africa’s largest tourism exhibition, which is to be held from the 9th -12th May 2009.
The Tourism Information Portal is an intelligent, interactive mapping solution loaded with rich tourism content – in simple terms it is an interactive, multimedia online tourist guide.
At Google there is a big focus on mapping technology – they believe that searching on and accessing content from maps is intuitive and offers many advantages. From the global reaction it seems others agree as more and more websites incorporate Google maps into their websites. With this increased demand designers at Google and throughout the world are developing exciting functionality, making the maps more interactive and the virtual experience more real.
Mapping is central to tourism and so this technology offers powerful and exciting opportunities for the industry. The difficulty is that this technology is in its infancy and the general lack of programming skills in Southern Africa makes development expensive. Furthermore this technology is evolving so quickly that developments become outdated in no time at all. Very few tourism organizations could afford to develop this technology or the necessary rich content to populate it. Fortunately they do not need to bother as SmartGuide has developed it and making it available to the industry.
SmartGuide has spent the last 10 months developing the TIP and are looking forward to introducing it to the tourism industry. The mapping technology will be made freely available to organizations in the tourism industry – the only minor cost will be the once off website integration fee and a small monthly bandwidth charge.
By eliminating the financial barrier to entry, SmartGuide hopes that the TIP is widely embraced by the Tourism Industry and becomes the online tourism guide for Southern Africa.
Anyone attending Indaba that wishes to find out more should come to stand K007 in Hall 3 in the ICC
SmartGuide develops promotional tourist videos of Southern Africa for our Interactive Travel Guide. We have some of these videos placed on You Tube to allow people to view them and to promote what we are doing.
We have not promoted these videos and people have generally stumbled upon them on You Tube. As a result we have not had that many viewers.
Things changed when we did a promotional video on Sandy Bay, Cape Town’s nudist beach – within a week or two this video had become viewed many more times than any other of the video that had been on You Tube over 8 months – it is amazing what happens when you include the word ‘nudist’ in the description.
For those of you reading this blog or watching the Sandy Bay video for the “wrong” reason we recommend that you come to Cape Town and see it for yourself. It is well known that Cape Town has some of the most gorgeous girls (and guys) in the world, many of whom can be found lying on the beach topless and if that is not enough then you can take the beautiful walk to the infamous Sandy Bay and strip off completely – be warned the beach goers do not like cameras!!!
And when you have satisfied your primal needs you can see what else Cape Town has to offer – natural beauty, nature, interesting culture, vibrant nightlife, laidback lifestyle, world class wines, fabulous foods, to mention just a few ….. oh! I nearly forgot the strip clubs.
SmartGuide is in the process of developing short videos for the Tourism Information Portal which is essentially an Interactive Online Guide for Southern Africa. Samples of these videos are being made available on You Tube and we would welcome you to view them and provide feedback to us.
SmartGuide has just developed an online interactive guide for the Table Mountain Cableway which is the ultimate guide for a traveler to Cape Town. This interactive guide provides you with 360 degree pictures from the main view points and has videos telling you more about what you are able to see and do in Cape Town. This guide will provide you with wonderful information about Cape Town, Table Mountain and the Cableway.
This type of technology is likely to become more and more popular as there is a growing trend place content on maps and pictures as it allows intuitive navigation – especially in travel and property . This a great example of how to make use of Web 2.0
