Over the last month, I was really thinking hard about, in the face of slowly coming out of this worldwide pandemic, how we can do more to help promote local businesses and help our local economy. And having arranged and conducted 2 separate virtual tour virtual meetups, and seeing the very positive reactions and feedback from many of the participants, it would be a great idea to conduct guided virtual tours meetup to promote future tourism opportunities to our local places. And at the same time Street View virtual visits are being promoted by Google on Connect which is good timing. I want to share some of the things that could be useful to many others. Feel free to use, modify any of these ideas and make them yours, in our concerted effort to connect with more people, make more friends from all around the world, promote future tourism, help our local economy and country get back in shape.
In short this post is about:
- Many of us are still social distancing and spending a lot more time at home.
- Tourism is massively hit, and we could not visit other places easily even if we wanted to.
- Local economy needs to be rekindled and stimulated, to ensure local businesses stay afloat.
- Local Guides can conduct guided virtual tours of their local attractions, and invite friends from all around the world to visit the place virtually with them through Google Maps and Street View.
- This will promote a lot of future tourism opportunities to help the economy grow in the near future.
- It will be a great opportunity for attendees to make new friends and learn a thing or two about other places around the world.
The 2 guided virtual tours that were conducted in the last few weeks as examples.
(Both virtual tour portions were recorded, and the YouTube video embedded in the recap, so it could viewed over and over, doesn’t include the socializing session)
16 April - Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Virtual Tour Recap
https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/Recap-Kuala-Lumpur-Malaysia-Virtual-Tour-Virtual-Meet-up/td-p/2442233
30 May - Penang Island Malaysia Virtual Tour Recap
https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/General-Discussion/Recap-Penang-Island-Malaysia-Virtual-Tour-Meet-up/m-p/2566604
A short recommendation on how to arrange a virtual tour virtual meetup (best to do done on a PC/laptop rather than a phone)
- Decide on a location to focus on, it’s best for the presenter to be familiar with the location
- Create a short document, let’s call this the “master tour document”, about 10-20 places of interest. Arrange in order on how one would actually visit if one was on the ground travelling.
- For each location, note down the Google Maps link, and research some information about the place to share, for example, opening hours, entrance fee, what’s special, when did it open, why would one visit etc. Also save links to specific Youtube videos or search results or photos that you may want to show for that location.
- Create a route map, using Google Maps, so you can see the route in 1 screen. Since Google Maps can support 10 locations per route, you can join multiple routes using 3 party tools like https://www.morethan10.com/
This is an example: Penang Virtual Tour Route
http://tiny.cc/PenangVirtualTour - Create a shared list of all the locations
This is an example: Penang Virtual Tour Shared List
https://goo.gl/maps/ebhk5PH9JNpsqDze8 - Look through each location and roughly have an idea of which photo / photosphere to present, it doesn’t have to be perfect, just needs to be enough to share with the audience the sights to describe the information prepared.
- Think about using existing YouTube videos or Photos to help with describing the place
8 ) Make sure all these links that you may use are documented in your “master tour document” in (2) - Have a dry run, to see how much you need to adjust so it fits into your time limit.
- Publish your meetup in the official meetup site, and promote to your friends directly. Since Google Hangout Meet (Basic) is free and supports up to 100 participants, use that, and you can include a link (go to gmail interface, left pane and start meetup, and copy the link, which you can reuse over and over). You may want to include the meetup link in the meetup RSVP page, or provide it later. In my experience, it’s better to just include it in the meetup RSVP page.
- Backup all the information that was prepared always.
On the day of the meetup. I am sharing this from a perspective of a yourself handling everything, including starting, hosting, letting people in, managing introductions, presenting the tour and wrapping up.
- About 15-20 mins before the meetup, start the Google Meet session on your PC/laptop. You may want to join from another device just to confirm that others can join, and leave your other device connected for monitoring purpose (not necessary though), just the main PC/laptop will be sufficient.Have a cup of water nearby.
- As people join, listen for the soft “ding” and allow them to get in, get to know the participants. In the mean time before starting the official agenda, encourage others to turn on mic and talk to others (but leave mic in mute if not talking), and also encourage them to use the chat interface.
- After 5-10 mins, start by introducing yourself, and if needed, get each person to introduce themselves, name and location should be sufficient. Note that, people may continually join or leave throughout the session, so you will need to pay attention to the “ding” and allow people to join. Once this is relatively completed, then start on to the virtual tour session.
You may also want to create and share in chat a shared Google Photos album and ask participants to save screenshots there. - If you are recording this, please announce that the virtual tour session will be recorded. There should not be any privacy issue since the virtual tour session only you will be mainly talking, so it’s quite advisable to only record the virtual tour session, and not the socializing session. Also note that Google Meet free does not come with a recording feature. Only GSuite Google Meet might come with recording depending on plan. Recording is up to yourself.
- Ask participants to mute unless they have a question, and turn their devices to landscape mode, they may need to turn on auto rotate to enable it on their phones.
[Refer to 3 pictures below for 6/7/8] - Give a brief introduction and begin your tour. For the virtual tour, I have found the best option for myself
- Host the meetup from a logged in browser window
- Open a separate incognito browser window to display the virtual tour, turn off your bookmark bar, maximize your browser window (do not run in full screen mode). This is best because there will not be any extra saved lists displaying itself on the Map and there will not be any disturbance from your logged in account, that’s why it’s better to present from an incognito browser window.
- Open your “master tour document”
- so all in all you will have 3 windows opened.
- From your Google Meet window, Present > A Window > Select your Incognito browser window
- Copy and paste hyperlinks from your “master tour document” to your “Incognito browser window” and participants will be able to see only that immediately.
- As you are presenting, go through 1 location to 1 location in sequence, open the link of the location in Google Maps on your “Incognito browser window”, look for the photos and photospheres in Google Maps to show to everyone. Refer to the information in your “master tour document” to explain. Participants will only see your “Incognito browser window”.
8 ) Whenever you hear a soft “ding” that someone is requesting to join, press “Alt-Tab” to switch window quickly and approve the join, and “Alt-Tab” back to your “Incognito browser window” or “master tour document”. Remember that other participants will only see your shared window, and nothing else.
- Keep going down the list, and repeating (7) and (8) until you finish your virtual tour.
- Thanks everyone for joining, and stop recording (assuming it was being recorded). And then continue with other chats or socializing.
- After everything, end the session.
Write your recap, and if there is a recording, upload to YouTube and embed in the recap.
This was how I delivered the 2 guided virtual tours alone, with no assistance during the session. The first time was a bit more difficult, and the 2nd time was a bit easier.
Please use and modify any idea here as you deem fit and create more guided virtual tours of your local places to share with others. Hope to attend at least a few by others.
All the best everyone.
#StreetView #VirtualTour #GuidedVirtualTour #SupportLocalBusinesses
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