USATP Blog //

Monday, February 2, 2009

USATP introduces VIRTUAL TOUR DIRECTOR

For the last six months, as the economy has tanked, we’ve been working on making Tour Directors’ jobs a bit easier. Today we introduce our latest project, Virtual Tour Director (VTD).

How many times have you nervously approached an attraction or venue you’ve never been to and wanted to make the group think you’d “been there, done that”? If you’re like me, it’s been more times than you’d like to admit. One thing I could have used during those times was just one quick glimpse of the location before my group or driver saw it so I appeared to actually know where I was going.

With that thought in mind, we went into production on developing a series of podcast videos of locations all of us will find ourselves visiting on the East Coast. And, since we wanted to make this first VTD video available for all Tour Pros to check out, I’ve posted it at the end of this edition of the USATP blog for all to view for free.

The technology to pull this off has long been here; it just took time to organize location sites, video shoots, voiceovers for the video, and editing to pull it off. It has been an excellent winter project. We wanted sites available to all of our Tour Pros before the 2009 Spring season begins.

As we add sites, we will be adding them to the Members-only Podcasts section of the site, requiring full membership for viewing. But to give you an idea of what this is all about, I’ve included this look at the Statue of Liberty Ferry location on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. This option for heading into New York Harbor saves many a group a lot of wait time by avoiding Lower Manhattan. If you’ve never heard of this option, take a look.

I’ll be adding a second video shortly which gives you another fun “extra photo op” for your group while you’re in the NYC area, a place most TDs have never seen, even though they’ve been past it many, many times.

Enjoy the complimentary Virtual Tour Director podcast: “Statue of Liberty Ferry from New Jersey” and become a more informed Tour Pro!