Sheep View 360

It revolutionised the future of virtual reality! The new technology allows travellers to have a complete sightseeing of an area. Before it was only accessible for people with the best professional equipment, multiple cameras or computers to be able to get a 360° view of your environment.

Launched by Google map and then made accessible from diverse cameras, through smartphone, video cameras, but also adaptable for the professional reflex cameras.

It enable a real and complete immersion in the environment, “like if you were there!” When moving your support (smartphone for example) you can have a 360 view with real details. It is also a good way to share your experiences with other people. It has never been so easy to create Street View experiences.

As this technology is available everywhere, or can at least cover a great part of the globe, it is a good tool in order to attract people and boost tourism in a specific destination thanks to the realism of the graphics. It is an opportunity for users to see 360 degree views of beautiful places that can even be unknown. It allows customers to explore places at their home and can create a desire. By consequence, it becomes for DMOs a real tool to attract visitors. This is a new way of experiencing sightseeing and a tool to show and promote specific areas of an area in a country.

It is a good influencer tool also in order to keep inform the tourist about the hotels, the restaurants, or the activities to check around once there. It makes you travel without leaving your couch but put the idea inside your head “and why not going there also?”

The sheep view 360 created in the Faroe Islands is a nice example to demonstrate how much this tool can be powerful and create feelings.

The Faroe Islands meaning “sheep island” is comprehensive when we know that there are 50 000 inhabitants and around 70,000 sheeps.

When the Faroe Islands’ DMO decided to record the country for Street View, they thought about using their most abundant natural resource: the sheeps. When Google heard about this idea, they wanted to support them and went to the island with all the equipment needed for street views.

According to Durita, at first it was to get Google technology coming and mapping the roads as well as making transportation easier for locals and tourists. 

“We have come to love our Sheep View so much that instead of replacing it, we have expanded the fleet of cameras”  Durita said.

It was a successful strategy for mapping the Faroe island and even more. Indeed, it arises the interest of many tourists which are know invited to help on mapping. Visit Faroe island can provide the equipment to the people interested by helping the destination.

Finally, this tool can be linked to the notion of social influencers where people are affected by the spread of information by a social media. It leads people to be aware of what is happening there, be interesting about those things and be part of it by getting involved.

Written by Clémence Duvent & Lauriane Amand

References:

http://www.thenational.ae/uae/technology/google-street-view-in-fujairah-will-boost-tourism-and-business

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/sheep-view-360

https://petapixel.com/2016/07/14/sheep-view-360-island-countrys-makeshift-street-view/

https://blog.google/products/maps/sheep-view-where-theres-wool-theres-way/

http://visitfaroeislands.com/sheepview360/google-has-arrived/