The Central PA Convention and Visitors Bureau recently announced a new alliance with the Google Maps — Business Views photography team and bring a new technological breakthrough to the area.
Beginning Tuesday, April 15, people planning a visit to Centre County will be able to take a 360 degree virtual walking tour of the streets and inside participating businesses right from the CPCVB website. Visit www.visitpennstate.org to take the first tour of its kind in Pennsylvania.
“This is a very exciting new tool to showcase our area. The image quality is impressive and that fact that it is an official Google brand app means our participating businesses will experience worldwide exposure second to none,” says Betsey Howell, executive director of the Central PA CVB.
The Central PA CVB is the first organization in PA to go live with this new Google Maps tool. Jim Hilker, organizer of the Google Maps Virtual Area guide and the region’s Google certified provider of the technology, is pleased with the partnership.
“We have found the State College area to be one of the most tech-savvy areas in the entire state and as such should be the first in PA to show off the latest and greatest visual marketing tools from Google,” he says.
Hilker has already received interest from several other business and tourism associations in PA, as well as dozens of others across the nation.
“This is the real deal in virtual visitor guides” Hilker adds. “There are 360 degree panoramic images taken at various points inside buildings, parks, trails, streets, then stitched together and linked to a menu. Viewers can virtually walk an entire city inside and out, or just click to the places they want to see using the menu.”
The Google team has been to the State College area twice in the last year bringing the popular Google Street View technology inside businesses to create a virtual walking tour into the participating businesses from Google Maps. The team is currently assembling all the virtual business and street view tours, compiling them into their custom App and producing a menu-driven Google Maps 360 Virtual Area Guide.
The CVB has scheduled Hilker’s team to return to the region on two dates to bring the Street & Business View technology inside more places. These dates are Tuesday April 15 and Thursday April 24. Interested businesses must pre-register. The registration form link can be found at the bottom of the menu in the Virtual Area Guide.
The VisitPennState Google Maps 360 Virtual Area Guide is open to members and non-members to participate, although non-members will be charged an additional fee to have their Google Tour included in the map. There is limited spacing for small advertising banners thus available only to locally-based entities.
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