Browsing Archive: October, 2010
The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) projects international travel to the United States will return to a growth mode in 2010. Visitor volume is expected to increase nine percent in 2010 followed by six-to-nine percent annual increases through 2015.
The rebound would completely offset the five percent decline in arrivals registered in 2009, the first decline in visitors since 2003. Visitor volume grew 41 percent between 2003, the low visitor volume level over the past ten years, and 2008, the... Continue reading ...
The U.S. Department of Commerce today announced that for the first seven months of 2010, 33.8 million international visitors traveled to the United States, a 12 percent increase over the same period in 2009. In July 2010, 6.3 million international visitors traveled to the United States, an increase of 15 percent over July 2009. July 2010 registered the tenth straight month of increases in U.S. arrivals.
International visitors spent $76.7 billion during the first seven months of 2010, 10 perce... Continue reading ...
Posted by AudioConexus on Tuesday, October 26, 2010,
In :
Storytelling
"People are hungry for entertainment. If they wanted boredom they would be filling out their tax returns."
Tim Crook on the Priciples of Writing for Audio. Great audio tours are not only fun and entertaining - they're memorable. However, making an audio tour memorable is not just the selection of compelling narrative voices, character actors, music and sound effects. Great audio tours are created because producers had a great script to follow.
A good script can mean the difference between a gr... Continue reading ...
The U.S. Department of Commerce today announced that as total overseas visits to the United States grew 11 percent during the first six months of 2010, business travel visits jumped 19 percent. At the same time, pleasure travel visits were up nine percent. After unprecedented declines in business travel of as much as 40 percent in 2009, the double digit gains in business travel that most of the top overseas countries registered in the first half of 2010 are a welcome change.
While the expansi... Continue reading ...
We recently looked at various social media channels such as Yahoo!, YouTube, Twitter, and tripadvisor to see how people were using social media to talk about bad sightseeing experiences. We did this because we wanted to see what kinds of comments were being shared. We also wanted to better understand the key complaints by people regarding sightseeing experiences in the social media space. The results we found were surprising. Tours and Tour Guides Make Lasting Impressions
The majority of peop... Continue reading ...
Everything about your business is your brand. If your brand promise is exceptional customer experiences, the perception of your brand solely rests on your ability to deliver on this promise (consistently). This is the promise that customers expect to receive from your business.
Here are some questions to consider when evaluating your brand's performance. - Who are your competitors and how are they positioning their brands?
- How is what you offer different?
- What do your customers think of your brand...
Posted by AudioConexus on Tuesday, October 19, 2010,
In :
Storytelling
Many of us love new gadgets, the latest killer app, or simply - technology that makes our lives easier with new features - and benefits. While we provide multilingual GPS tours for sightseeing in mobile markets (buses, boats, trolleys, trains, and trams), GPS tours are evolving in other areas of the tourism industry - for example, the proliferation of GPS enabled mobile phones and the development of applications such as open source Android by Google (Android includes an API for location-based... Continue reading ...
Posted by AudioConexus on Monday, October 18, 2010,
In :
Storytelling
When designing soundscapes and audio tours there are several considerations when creating the final sound production. The recording of actors and narration voices and the mixing in of music and sound effects at the appropriate levels requires a clear understanding of how the audio tours will be heard. For example, tours may be delivered through: - Public Address Systems
- mp3 players and headsets
- External speakers on audio guides
- Radio Frequency (RF) to name a few
As a result, creating the final prod... Continue reading ...
Posted by AudioConexus on Friday, October 15, 2010,
In :
Storytelling
In an article appearing in the Montreal Gazette last year titled “Museums big and small look for ways to attract new visitors“, the writer (there was no byline) begins the article by writing that “Successful culture tourism is all about forging an emotional connection.”
Some of the important considerations of this article include:
“Today’s tourist tends to be better educated, more experimental, (technologically) wired, comfortable financially, has multiple interests and wants an aut... Continue reading ...
Sergio Zyman, a world leading marketer, defines advertising as “the goal of advertising is to sell more stuff to more people more often for more money.” The reason this statement is vitally important is simple. It’s not about how great your advertising looks, or how creative your campaign may be, it’s about getting results – it’s about selling more stuff.
In many cases, tourism venues rely more heavily on spending marketing dollars on short-term demand activities to increase seaso... Continue reading ...
Like other forms of media and communications directed at your target markets, your Internet marketing efforts should be integrated with your overall marketing strategy and managed to capture the greatest potential benefits. Your tourism business needs to create an online marketing strategy to generate and maintain traffic to your Website, while providing trip planning information to potential tourists, tour operators and other travel influencers in your key target audiences. Additionally, try... Continue reading ...
In a follow-up to our blog post, Now Shipping Hamsters - Recharge Your Day With Nokia's Viral Video - this Volkswagen experiment called the "The Fun Theory" shows why having more fun is always the first choice for most people. And did we forget to mention that this video had over 6 million views in 4 weeks when it was released!
"Fun sells. The early proof of that can be seen in the amazing success of location-based networks such as Gowalla, MyTown and Foursquare, and in the breakthrough marke... Continue reading ...
The GPS Digital Audio System (or "DAS") automatically triggers audio whenever it enters into a predetermined geographical area. With this feature you can easily design a “no operator-intervention required” audio tour system on a tour bus, boat, trolley, train or tram that automatically plays pre-recorded audio such as next stop messages, tour commentary, (or other audio content) whenever it enters into a specified area.
The GPS DAS accomplishes this by reading a data stream from a GPS (Geo... Continue reading ...
Posted by AudioConexus on Friday, October 8, 2010,
In :
Storytelling
The purpose of a Creative Outline is to define a creative concept and the sound production rationale that will inform our readers of the development of an enhanced audio tour experience.
This is an analytical document intended to outline a creative approach comprised of three integrated and intrinsically connected components: - Tour Theme (the approach we propose to take in developing the guided experience);
- Storyline / Route Logistics (the continuity or thread of story elements we propose shoul...
The U.S. Department of Commerce today announced that for the first six months of 2010, 27.5 million international visitors traveled to the United States, an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2009. In June 2010, 4.7 million international visitors traveled to the United States, an increase of 16 percent over June 2009. June 2010 registered the ninth straight month of increases in U.S. arrivals.
International visitors spent $65.2 billion during the first six months of 2010, eight perce... Continue reading ...
Working on the premise - it's not about the technology, it's what you do with it - or as we say, it's the experience that counts, we thought we'd take this opportunity to share one of 2010's new viral videos from phone manufacturer Nokia. More proof that fun sells.
Gabe Zichermann, author “Game-Based Marketing” and “Funware in Action” and CEO of professional mobile social networking startup beamME wrote earlier this year:
"Just like sex, fun sells. The early proof of that can be seen ... Continue reading ...
Posted by AudioConexus on Tuesday, October 5, 2010,
In :
Storytelling
As the use of multimedia in interpretation continues to grow in popularity we are receiving more inquiries regarding video tours for smartphone apps. Videos are the new hip. And they look great in an app. However, this approach to developing tours is flawed.
We don't produce video tours because we know they don't work (with the exception of video tours created for accessibility). We've seen many companies come into the market with a video intensive strategy for developing tours. Unfortunately,... Continue reading ...
When we're out on sites we carry a Flip. This low cost video camera provides great quality video for a very reasonable price. We use the Flip minoHD - it's slim and easy to use. With one-touch video uploading to websites such as YouTube, MySpace and AOL, this camcorder fits comfortably in your hand and offers impressive HD quality video (1280-by-720 HD) for its size. The Flip minoHD features a big red button you use to start and stop recording and includes touch-sensitive buttons for Volume ... Continue reading ...
TweetChat offers you the opportunity to pre-arrange a conversation through the use of Twitter. By using a predefined hastag to link tweets to a virtual conversation you can start your own conversation in advance and at a specific time. Or you can choose to participate in a Tweet Chat yourself.
"TweetChat helps put your blinders on to the Twitter-sphere while you monitor and chat about one topic. TweetChat creates Twitter-based online-chat rooms, based on the hashtags feature (for example, #i... Continue reading ...
|
AudioConexus Blog
Helping you learn more about tourism trends, storytelling and audio tours. Help, tips, advice, and techniques for better storytelling and tourism marketing. Our Higher Purpose is to captivate the imagination by creating exceptional entertainment experiences about our world - shared experiences that inspire the human spirit and unite us in discovery. |
