Tourism Thematic Team: How to make a virtual tour?

How to make a virtual tour?

Tourism Thematic Team

Digital & new technologies in tourism education sub group

Contents

1. What is a virtual tour

2. Planning a virtual tour

2.1 Description of the guiding process on virtual tours

5 2.2 How to make interesting story for the customers

9 2.3 Equipment and software which could be used 14

3. Making a virtual tour 18 3.1 Tips for arrangements 18 3.2 How to use equipment 18 4. Some good experiences and practices

1. What is a virtual tour

A 360 Virtual Tour is a collection of 360 degree panoramic rotating images, stitched together to form a full, 360° view of a location. Special cameras, lenses, technologies and methods are used to bring a tour together into a visual experience for the viewer.

A virtual tour package consists of several high resolution photographs, called “spins”, brought together in a complete tour package. This high quality user experience shows multiple locations throughout a site, switching views via thumbnails. Once created, the viewer is able to experience what it is like to be somewhere they are actually not. The user has full control over what they want to look at and can zoom in or out to enhance the scene they’re viewing.

Virtual tours should not be confused with video tours, even though both types of tours are similar. Video tours only allow users to see one point of view at any given time. With a virtual tour, users can see an entire panoramic scene or zoom in to get a closer look at a particular area.

This virtual experience could be viewed through desktop computers, laptops, tablets and even mobile devices. Some virtual tours also include sound effects such as music or a narration describing products or points of interest. Many offer buttons that can be clicked on by users who want to take a still image of a particular portion of the tour. In few words, a virtual tour is the best way to accurately show what a location really looks like.

More and more, tourism companies are looking to virtual tours with interest, as they are considered a marketing tool that can help bring new customers and clients to their business.

In fact, tourists want to get to know a place before booking a vacation there. Virtual tours make this desire a reality by providing travelers with a clear view of notable tourist attractions, local hotels, and restaurants. Museums and galleries also offer virtual tours with narrations explaining the meaning and importance of various artifacts and exhibitions.

The diffusion of virtual tours in the tourism industry raises the need to train students in tourism vocational courses to create, manage and organize virtual tours. To meet this need, it is necessary to start by training the teachers themselves, so that they have up to date skills in the use of technology and methods to be trasnferred to students. This handbook is born from this, with the objective to provide a practical tool for teachers on how to use cell phones and 360 cameras on planning and making virtual tours. Besides this, the guide contains good experiences and assignments on virtual tours that can ispire teachers and trainers’ didactics.

2. Planning a virtual tour

A virtual tour is a feature that allows walking around the virtual premises from the first person perspective. This method can be used, e.g., in museums and walking tours. The guide is filmed in a live environment by a camera operator. Target is that the customer will get real life experience through virtual equipment.

2.1 Description of the guiding process on virtual tours

• Know your customer / target market: what are their needs, objectives, interests

• Decide your topic / area

• Plan the tour in a virtual point of view, what will make your tour interesting

• Plan all tour elements in advance and plan a schedule

• What kind of equipment is needed? (Light, sounds, microphones)

• Make “a test tour”

• Are the other customers around when you film your virtual tour?

• Be prepared for exceptional situations and have a plan B, e.g., internet not working, or you need to finish guiding unexpectedly.

PLAN

• Take possible noises, traffic, road works etc. into account and plan the route carefully.

• Can you avoid traffic hours or is the rush hour especially something you want to show?

• Are the sites better to be seen in the daylight or in the night time?

• If a walking tour, avoid too long walks between the sites: there should be enough attractions on the way to keep the tour interesting until the end.

• Book a professional guide to ensure smooth responding to any unexpected or surprising situations.

• Have a safety plan done and updated.

• Use Storyboard to visualize and plan the tour

PREPARE

• Reserve the place, if needed. Do you need other customers over there or is it better to have silence at the place.

• Check all the facilities. You have right equipment, technics which are needed. They are working properly

• Check the schedule

• Have everything brought to the site at the right time: guide, equipment.

• If you’re doing outdoor guiding, be prepared for different weather disturbances: umbrella, raincoat, microphone cover etc.

• When you start to make a virtual tour, make a good first impression and send positive vibes.

• Introduce yourself: name and background. Who are you and why you are guiding?

• Explain what your tour is about, what you are going to show, schedule

• Ensure your voice can be heard and your face can be seen.

• Be excited about the tour, this really can be heard through.

DURING

• Speak clearly and use your voice loudly enough

• Look at the camera and use kind facial impressions

• Think about how you walk; are you walking too fast / too slow. Talk to the camera most of the time even though you are walking, turning etc.

• Content needs to be interesting, use humour to make it fun, suitable for your customers

• Keep pauses, so guests have time to process information

• Brighten your storytelling by making examples, fun facts, asking questions

• Don’t hurry

• Do not mention the things or sites you are not seeing at the moment.

• Walk close to the sites to see them properly for costumers, especially when you film in the night time.

• Keep the camera mostly pointed to the direction that you see to ensure you are talking about the things others can also see.

• Keep the microphone near your mouth all the time

• Make an eye contact to the camera lens, not the screen.

• Pay attention to your breathing. Walk slow so you do not get too heavy breath that can be heard.

• Ask questions from the audience, even if they are not able to answer but just to give something to think about during the walk. You can also make a question and say that you will tell the answer by the next attraction.

• Use quite formal language to take into account those who are not native speakers.

• Do not rush: viewers need more time to recognize buildings etc., especially if there is no daylight.

• Do not keep too many things in hand to avoid dropping them. If possible, wear also the microphone instead of holding it in the hand.

• Tell clearly that the tour is now ending, make a final closure

• If it’s a live situation, ask for the questions. Be happy to answer all the questions and make conversation in the end. Reserve enough time for this. If there are no questions, be prepared to tell something else so your time slot will be full filled.

• Ask for feedback to improve your tour in the future and to know if your customers are happy with it

• Make your final speech something to remember, you can use some interesting facts about the sites you just saw.

• Recommend something: to familiarize with local cuisine etc. or some other virtual tour your company offers.

2.2 How to make interesting story for the customers

The structure of the tour story should have:

1. A catchy and meaningful “name of the tour”

• The name of the tour should attract and grab the attention of the visitor/tourist. You can use a kind of slogan or a short description of what is the tour about.

• Recommended number of words: maximum 10

2. A strong opening

• The introduction to the tour should draw the visitor in.

• The first 25 30 words and should attract the attention for long enough to make the visitor want to explore/ watch the rest of the story. You can use “hooks” such as asking a question, present a surprising fact, or raise people wonder.

3. A meaningful ending:

• The closure of the tour shows why it’s significant / worthwhile and can be memorable because has an effect/impact on people’s feelings, knowledge and understanding (e.g. learning something new or improving), behaviour, attitude…

on people

1.

Be personal

Individual stories (personal experiences and/or historical deeds) bring the past to life and help people connect with history on an emotional level.

Communicate the human connotation of cultural assets (artefacts, sites…): who designed, made and used them, and why?

Pay attention to social and cultural contexts of different groups of public.

2.

Be informal but expert

Prefer colloquial to formal / academic language

Adapt the language to the audience you’d like to reach.

Even if the content has to be expert, the style can be playful.

3.

Tell hidden stories

Bring untold cultural history and less known heritage to light.

Engage audiences and create a sense of community, identity and shared history. Let people use their own voice (include testimonies of people who participated in activities)

The simpler your story, the more impact it can have

4.

Enrich the story with images

Use visuals and text together to engage the audience. Zooming in to large, high quality images increases curiosity and can help direct people to key details that might be overlooked.

5.

Proceed from details to the big picture

Begin with a particular image, character or event that lies at the emotional heart of the story, the move to the bigger picture, rather than the other way round. You can return to the initial detail throughout the story.

6.

Be evocative

Don’t be afraid to use poetic, descriptive and evocative approaches, imagery and sounds. Audio or video might help bring something to life. When using sounds and music for your video, be careful with copyright.

The simpler your story, the more impact it can have on people…

Telling cultural heritage

1. Tangible Cultural Elements:

• arts (paintings, sculptures, objects and artifacts that belong to the previous generations, rare books, etc.)

• buildings/architecture/ fortifications, bridges…

2. Intangible Cultural Elements:

• the way a specific group of people live,

• how a specific group of people perceive situations

• what are common behaviors in the specific community

• how a group or a society adapt to the environment

• traditions (such as food, dances, and music),

• knowledge and beliefs shared and passed from generation to generation among people

Telling biodiversity and natural heritage

• Animals: breed, number of animals, aspect, habitat/breeding/ fishing technique, relation with humans…

• Fruit and vegetables: Variety/ecotype, aspect, Availability, Growth/Cultivation or habitat / seasonality, Harvest and storage / properties (also nutritional)

• Landscape: climate, number and types of species, geology,

• Legends / traditions /stories

• Territory

Telling Food&Wine products

• Product / variety / breed

• Autochthonous origin Territory

• Processing technique

• Aging/Curing environment and technique

• Production period

• Special / traditional use or recipe based on that product

• Curiosities about the product

Telling socially responsible / solidarity travel

• community demographics (older/younger, male/female)

• social and/or economic characteristics (rich/poor, well educated or not, rural/urban)

• existing local, regional or national development needs

• problems and/or issues that the community experiences

• how the tourism contributes to solving these

• changes that you expected to see

Tips from marketing benchmarks and statictics2

• Visual content is 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.

• Articles with an image once every 75 100 words got double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images.

• Colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%.

• When people hear information, they are likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later.

• Nearly two thirds of consumers prefer video under 60 seconds.

• Videos under 5 minutes in length account for 55% of total video consumption time on smartphones.

• According to video marketing benchmarks, 56% of all videos published in 2017 are less than 2 minutes long.

• Videos up to 2 minutes long get the most engagement.

• According to Video Marketing statistics for 2017, 65% of people who watch the first three seconds of a video will watch for at least 10 seconds, and 45% will watch for 30 seconds. Make sure to include the “hook” of your story in the beginning of your video.

• The ideal length for a video on Instagram is 30 seconds, on Twitter 45 seconds, on Facebook 1 minute, but on YouTube 2 minutes. It’s also good to know that, for example on Facebook, 95% of

Facebook videos are watched without sound. Ensure that the message in your video can be understood without hearing a single word and/or consider subtitling your video.

2.3 Equipment and software which could be used

One of the important tasks in creating a virtual tour is to choose the right software that will make the virtual tour more interactive, detailed, modern and interesting for the customers. Panoramic or 360° photos are the main components of creating a virtual tour. Specialized software is needed to make the shots and stitch them together. Also, the software has options for editing and correcting images. There are paid and free apps, for professionals and beginners.

One of the most popular tools for making virtual tours is ThingLink https://www.thinglink.com/

Click the image to find tutorial for using the ThingLink

It has become popular to create virtual tours in social media with the ability to promote them with a link to the main 3D tour. Among young people, Instagram and Tik Tok are actively used. For example, 41% of Tik Tok users aged 16 to 24 are attracted to videos about interesting tourist spots. The hashtags #travel #trip are among the most popular hashtags in Tik Tok and Instagram. One of the advantages of this sites is that it is free.

How to make a TikTok video

Step 1: Click on the "+" button. If it is your first time to shoot, you need to allow TikTok to access your camera and recorder.

Step 2: Set up the timer, speed, beauty effects, filters, effects, long press the red button to start shooting.

Step 3: Choose one piece of music to level up your video.

Step 4: Once the film is done, press the red check to go to the editing page.

Step 5: Go to the upper right, you can choose another music, adjust the volume and cut sound.

Step 6: Set one frame of the video as a cover and add other special effects through the two buttons on the down left corner.

Step 6: Set one frame of the video as a cover and add other special effects through the two buttons on the down left corner.

6 Creative TikTok Tourism Ideas

1. Encourage guests to capture animals in their videos. Animals are amazing for creating waves of delight on the feed

2. Tips/tricks and life hacks are useful angles to prep guests ahead of visiting your destination

3. Allow guests to film activities in action on a big adventure day

4. If you operate walking or food tours, highlight a few viewpoints guests will see while on tour with you

5. Create a video including what to pack for a trip along with ‘must have’ items

6. Start a TikTok travel challenge that’s specific to your destination

The quality of virtual tour depends also on the equipment the photographer uses

1. This can be a portable 360° camera. The panoramic pictures can be made in one shot. In this case, the shooting is done quickly but the quality of the tour is often not the best.

2. Professional equipment. DSLR cameras or equipment for scanning the rooms are used in this case.They make from 5 to 20 shots with alternating turning and incline of the camera. The image quality is much higher with such equipment but the process takes more time.

Equipment:

Choose equipment based on the purpose of making a virtual tour and the budget

Portable cameras can be used in situations where you need to take a lot of panoramic pictures in a short time and the quality is not important

If the quality of the image is in the first place, you should use professional equipment

3. Making a virtual tour

3.1

Tips for arrangements

Before you start making a virtual tour, make sure you took into account all these factors:

• all the equipment is ready to use

• proper lighting (shooting indoors with dim lighting will take twice longer than with normal indoor lighting)

• proper time for shooting

• premises are ready for shooting

• you have necessary permits for shooting

3.2 How to use equipment

Now you can start. Here are tips for making your shooting process perfect:

• Keep the camera in the same spot for every shot

The distance between camera and floor should be kept unchanged.

• Make sure that there is some overlap from photo to photo

For example, if you are sweeping from left to right, locate an object in the right side of your viewfinder on the 1st shot. Then make sure you can see that same object on the left side of your viewfinder on the 2nd shot. Continue this for each shot. Ideally, you should have about 25% 40% of each frame overlapping the previous frame.

• Based on the calculated number of shots required for stitching, shooting more images than required is suggested

• Shooting photos clockwise is suggested

• Lock the camera's exposure and white balance for all shots

This will help to avoid substantial changes in lightness/darkness from frame to frame. If you can’t or don’t want to do this, and there are substantial variations in lightness from frame to frame, take your shots with more overlap (e.g., 50% overlap from shot to shot). This will minimize the amount of lightness change from any one shot to the next shot. If you can, also lock your white balance for all shots.

• Don't zoom in or out between frames

• Avoid the reflections

There are the obstacles for photographers such as mirrors and glossy surfaces during the shooting. It is worth paying special attention to this. It's better to step aside (using the wireless remote) before taking the shot than to spend the time cleaning up your reflection in the mirror with Photoshop. Choose an angle where there are no reflections at all.

• Keep the lens and matrix clean

Make sure there is no debris on the glass and sensor before taking a photo. Dust will give you a lot of trouble at the stage of photo editing.

• Beware of objects which move between shots

Clouds move, trees sway in the wind, and people move around. If people and/or things are moving, take your shots as quickly as possible to minimize the amount of variation between frames.

• Keep the tripod stable

Make sure the tripod stands fixedly and does not interfere with anyone. If you move the tripod during shooting, the panorama will have to be completely re shot. When the tripod is light, hang something on the hook of the center shaft, such as a backpack with equipment. So it will stand more stable.

• Don't forget to focus

Tune the sharpness for each panorama.

4. Some good experiences and practices

Sedu, Finland

Virtual tours usage is gaining momentum in many areas of activity. Sedu uses digitalization in many fields of work. One of the cases of a virtual tour usage is Sedu’s official website. Sedu has created a virtual guide of campuses in different locations. Many rooms on campuses are equipped for the practical needs of various areas (for nurses, hairdressers, mechanics, etc ).The virtual tour has navigation to walk from one room to another. For example, it is very useful for applicants to walk around the campuses.

Look 360 at Sedu’s campus in Kurikka by clicking the image:

Visit in one of the Sedu’s campuses in Seinäjoki by clicking the image: Also, one of the cases of using a virtual tour in Sedu is the virtual room for mechanics with very good navigation by tooltips about safety and other instructions. Please follow and explore by clicking the image:

Deltion College, Netherlands

Deltion College offers its students online classes about virtual tours. Here you will find useful ideas for implementing lessons in an online learning environment

Click on the image to familiarize yourself with the online course materials

5. Useful links

Links for storytelling, inspiring examples:

• Your Story, Our Story (Tenement Museum, New York): stories of US immigration and migration

• Wellcome Stories (Wellcome Collection, London): links between science, medicine, life and art

• The stories of the National Archaeological Museum of the Marche: fictional characters are used to describe archaeological objects and how they would have been used and loved

• Hidden Histories of Exploration (Royal Geographical Society, London): stories of local interpreters, guides and other intermediaries who worked with European explorers

• A Closer Look (Louvre, Paris) invites people to look closely at a high resolution image of a single artwork, before telling the story of its subject and creation and providing interesting comparisons with other works

• Faint Signals (British Library, London) invites people to explore a digital forest environment brought to life by the institution’s extensive collection of sound recordings from Yorkshire. The audio adapts to reflect the changing environment and includes sounds that have been lost.

Useful videos:

• How To Make A Virtual Tour In 2022 // 5 Simple Steps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2WhIcY3rvo

• How to Create a Virtual Tour with Any 360 Camera: Full Guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOd_VYOKMm0

• Premiere Tutorial | How to edit 360 video for VR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7QuLhQlplA

• Which 360 Camera Should You Buy In 2022? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PaEzdPijEI

• How To Create A 360º Virtual Tour From Your Phone For Free https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY5VTKtwCoM

• Google Tour Creator Tutorial creating a free 360 tour of a museum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTtOZ_BCUXs

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0RNUSuII20&t=4s

Other sources:

• https://www.makeuseof.com/best websites to create virtual tours/

• https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how to make a storyboard for video cms 26374

• https://www.italy croatia.eu/documents/114436/1633547/4.1_SCF_D.4.1.2+Handbook+for+waiters_Final.pdf/7d3663 bc c606 fa44 07db efe081cb41f8?t=1585846863173

• https://www.checkfront.com/blog/tiktok tours

• https://www.easypano.com/panorama photography/how to shoot panorama.html

Virtual tours in social media:

• WeAreSocial Think forward 2022: https://thinkforward.wearesocial.com/?_ga=2.55607340.640625670.1645538561 1387144938.1645538561

• Some stories to share: https://www.gadgetgamenews.com/article/tiktok tour guides city restaurant previews influencers