What are you investing in? This Week in Tourism from Gros Morne Nat’l Park.

Latest trends in mobile:

• over a third of folks are using Facebook with their handheld device. (that’s over 200 Million people!)
• Travelport reports more than half of business customers now use mobile technology for researching and booking hotels.
• 80% of these folks said mobile applications offering suggested restaurants and bars around the hotel location and a similar number want suggestions for recreational activities.
• 71% think Wi-Fi should be standard in hotel rooms.  (Just who are the other 29% hotel bookkeepers?)
• EMarketer estimates that 31% of mobile Internet users / 34% of smartphone users (nearly 25 million US mobile users) will research travel information on their mobile devices before making a trip this year. Nearly 12 million will use the mobile channel to book their plans.

I have answers to the most common reasons why many tourism folks haven’t started working on a handheld version of their website.

• You don’t know where to start. You hesitating because you don’t know what to do or how to do it.   Ask your guests what kind of info would be helpful.  Think like a traveler.  That’s a good start. Then see this little video.
  • Start with a map
  • Your phone number
  • Your SMS text number (if you don’t have one, get one.  Simple solution is a dedicated cell phone, but there are other options – Google Voice, Toktumi.)

• You can’t afford another website. You can’t afford NOT to have a mobile site.  Your traditional website will be gathering dust and be all but forgotten once you see the responses to your mobile efforts grow.  Check out Onbile.com and try their mobile website creation tool.  We used it to create our site.  Makes it easy to make changes anytime online and opens in a browser for those with mobile devices instead of our main site.  Oh, btw, it’s Free.
• You think your site looks just fine on the tiny screens. Get real.  Even with those fancy phones that zoom in are poor substitute to a well designed mobile website.  Take care of simple things for your traveler with a clean minimalist site.
• You don’t have the time to get working on your mobile site. You will soon have lots of time.   When all the business is going to those who make the time to create their mobile site.
• You think this accelerating growth trend is temporary and that folks will soon abandon their mobile devices? Your website is probably still a free geocities website and you still use a  hotmail address.  How did you ever find yourself on this page discussing mobile websites and tourism?

What are your thoughts on mobile websites? Any tips or resources to share?  Do you use a mobile service, a web or app designer that could help others get their mobile site up and running?

With most savvy tourism businesses starting to look seriously at video, a question I frequently get from tourism operators is How long should my promotional video be?

When considering video length it is best to measure time in seconds rather than minutes.  After 2 minutes, 60% of people have tuned out!

The best answer to the question “How long should your promotional video be?” has more to do with how long is your audience willing to pay attention, than with how long it will take you to get your point across.

90 – 180 seconds is all the time you get to get your message across with video.

A recent study by Visible Measures looked at 40 million different videos which have over 7 billion combined views to produce the veiwer abandonment chart below. All videos were less than 5 minutes long.

Less is More – Get to the Point
In order to keep as many viewers as possible make sure your video starts with your best stuff. According to Visible Measures, 20% of viewers abandon video within 10 seconds.
It is possible to tell your story in 90-100 seconds, but you may need to look outside your organization and your editing skillset in order to tell your story in less time. Just because the video is short, doesn’t mean your tourism business or association should give video less attention. In fact, with all the video available to folks on the Web, making a high quality short promotional video can have a huge impact on viewer retention for the entire video.

It is better to produce three two minute videos with targeted, tight story-telling than it is to produce one 6 minute promotional video. Get to the point quickly, hit your viewer with your best shots and leave the rest on the cutting room floor.

The viewers have spoken.

Media students from college or university can be a big help to tourism industry.  It’s the end of another school term and that means its time to reach out to your local community college to get the skills you need to improve your team.

Intern or Co-op?

Many post-secondary institutions offer students opportunities to get work experience as part of the learning experience.  Interns generally spend a few weeks working with a business at or near the end of the school term to round out their learning.  Co-op programs often offer students work placements for an entire term – sometimes longer.

This week we are delighted to be working with a video production intern for a 100 hour placement with our tourism business.  A current graduating student from the local college with expertise in producing video is getting hands on experience producing media with us.  It is not costing us a penny.

What could your region or business do if you had a college trained multimedia intern for 100 hours?

Although I feel quite competent at producing media and distributing it online, I called the local college media studies department and talked with them about the media learning opportunities we could provide.  In our case it meant talking with the broadcasting radio and broadcasting television and video programs department of Canadore College. Within hours we had an applicant who was eager to put their skills of directing, producing, shooting and editing video that tells our stories.

As a result, we are working with a student who can teach us a lot, as well as provide us with professionally produced media content that we can post to the Web.  There are many benefits of working with your local college multimedia department.

• getting access to current best practices
• putting idle cameras and audio recording equipment to use
• learning from students who know how to use state of the art media production tools
• producing high quality media content that tells our story
• getting access to skilled workforce who will be looking for summer employment at the end of their intern placement.

What skills can your business or region recruit from the local college?

Start by making a wish list of all the projects you hope to accomplish and then having a gander at your local post secondary institution programs that involve a work placement.  Too often in tourism we restrict our recruitment to students in the Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts programs.  Match your search for talent with your needs.   And don’t neglect the local high schools either.  We’ve already made contact with the local high school to engage a media enthused student for a full-time co-op work placement next school term.

Have you had success working with students in your tourism business?  How?

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There are three essential ingredients to getting started with video:

• shooting video (which was the focus of part 1 of the series)
• editing and producing video
• posting and sharing video

Editing and Producing Video

Editing and Producing Video is perhaps the most challenging aspect of getting great video online for your tourism business.   It can be made a whole lot less challenging by doing things as efficiently and with high quality when shooting video.  The less edits you need to make, the fast your video production will be.

How long should my finished videos be?

If you speak to most people who watch videos online, shorter is better.  Once you have edited your video and you think you have a finished story, go back and trim even more content.  If you have edited a very good 5 minute video, chances are you will have a great 3 minute video if you trim back the content even more.  I like to think of video production as much like making maple syrup.  In the forest we start with 33 gallons of sap and distill that down to just one gallon of syrup.  We could stop boiling sooner and we’d have more sweet liquid for folks, but most people prefer a smaller amount of a better product.

How much video does it take to make a great three minute video?

In general, the more video you start with, the better the finished 3 minute video will be.  Sometimes, a video can be very good, with very little editing.  In general, you’ll only use about 10-20% of the actual raw video you shoot in a great three minute video.  That means 15-30 minutes of video captured on your camera and loaded into your computer produces three minutes of finished video.

What does it cost to edit and produce videos?

The vast majority of video producers will never in their lifetime need to purchase software to make movies on their computer.  The only real cost is time.

How long does it take to edit video?

For starters, plan on spending one – two hours of editing for each minute of finished video.

Do I need any special computer hardware to make videos?

Any new computer or laptop has more than enough power for anyone to edit and produce video.  Computers designed specifically for the task of editing video (like the MacPro) have more processor power so they can do most tasks more quickly.

Most people will find it much easier to edit video if they setup their computer with dual monitors – one for using the editing tools and one for seeing the video as it is being produced.  Desktop PC’s can easily add a video card which makes it easy for a second screen to be added.  Both Mac and PC laptops are ready to use a second screen just by plugging one in and setting the screen preferences, so you can use your laptop screen and an external one, side by side.

The most important consideration for editing video on a computer is free hard drive space.  Hard drive space is where the very large video files go while you are editing your video.  Editing Video and HD video requires a significant amount of free space.  This is why laptops are sometimes a poor choice for editing video, particularly if they are used for a lot of other tasks.  If serious about editing video, the smallest hard drive I would recommend for a desktop computer is 1 Terabyte.   Same goes for external hard drives for laptops.  Bigger is always better.

How do I make the best use of space on my computer?  What about backup copies?

The solution we have used for years in dealing with large video files is to keep as much space as possible available on the computer hard drive or flash drive at all times.  We upload the video files we are editing onto the computer, and once a final video is produced and uploaded to the Web,  we move the new video to an external back up hard drive for safe keeping and delete the original video files – freeing up space for the next project.  Digital video camera tapes are relatively inexpensive.  Most professional video producers keep the original tapes they used to shoot video as their back-up, clearly labelling the original tape with the date and video content information and storing tapes in a safe location.    If shooting video to a hard-drive or flash drive video camera, consider saving the original video files used to edit your video to a back up hard drive, along with the finished video.

What software is needed to edit video?  Is it beginner-friendly?

If you are new to making video, most computers come with basic, easy to learn, editing software that lets you slice video clips and move them around on a timeline, add simple video effects like titles and screen transitions, add photos and audio tracks.  If you are purchasing a new computer to edit video, use what James Cameron and his team used to make Avatar - an Apple Computer.  Most beginners find Apple’s iMovie simple to learn and use and it has numerous effects that can be used to add your personal touch to your productions.  It comes pre-installed on Apple computers and it will take years of production before you are probably ready for a more powerful editing tool like Apple’s Final Cut Express. When you feel like a pro, join James Cameron who uses – Apple’s Final Cut Pro, core component of Final Cut Studio.

On a PC running Windows, Movie Maker has come pre-installed on XP and many versions of Vista.  The new Windows operating system – Windows 7 requires movie-makers to download MovieMaker.  It’s free to anyone.  When ready for extreme movie making on a PC, move on over to Adobe Premiere.

I haven’t got any time to make movies, how can I get video online?

For the absolutely fearful beginner, online tools like Animoto let producers slice together photos and video into instant automated videos shows for free.  Although we produce and edit our own movies using software and tools described above, we also sometimes like to produce quick little videos with no muss, no fuss.  That’s why we subscribe to a paid version of Animoto in addition to our other investments in video production.

Where do I get music to add to my videos?

The easiest, least expensive and legal way to add free music to your videos is by using CreativeCommons licensed tunes from Jamendo. The music on the site is royalty-free, meaning you pay nothing to download and use these tunes in your videos.

Is it OK to add music from my commercial music collection to videos I make to promote my business?

NO.  Never.  Seriously.  Never.

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