SEATTLE – As travel blogs, search engine marketing (SEM), YouTube, Flikr, Facebook Fan pages and Twitter become more crucial in reaching travelers, and as content-accessing devices proliferate, media experts predict that image-based storytelling will play an increasingly important role within the tourism industry.
Use of multimedia assets and content distribution is becoming a priority especially for the adventure tourism sector, which provides an unusually high degree of opportunities to capture an intensely diverse array of images and stories about the natural environment, cultures worldwide, and visually rich, activity-based travel. For this reason, the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s 2010 Adventure Travel World Summit (ATWS) set for October 4-7 in Aviemore, Scotland, has placed increased emphasis on lectures, workshops, case studies and content geared toward videography, photography, filmmaking and social media outlets to help educate, inspire and further engage delegates in building comprehensive multimedia strategies.
Visual storytelling and multimedia content featured at the Summit include:
- Strategic Solutions Session: Visual Storytelling - Producing and publishing quality videos on a budget,
- Crash Course: Social Media - Digging deeper, beyond awareness building,
- Film Screening: Film principals show and discuss, Milking the Rhino, a documentary showcasing the deepening conflict between humans and animals in an ever-shrinking world – a case study;
- Selling the Dream: World-renowned conservation photographer explores how photography still inspires in the in face of emerging technology,
- Meet the Press: Online and print journalists share how media outlets keep pace with new content delivery technologies, applications and devices, and
- Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival: Delegates will view an inspiring and exciting selection of the very best adventure films, blending the incredible with the farcical, and adding a dash of hilarity with a healthy portion of genuine inspiration.
- Renowned experts in photography, videography, online marketing, social media and journalism will be providing advice, real-world examples and specific tools and tactics to ATWS delegates. The goal of the emphasis on visual storytelling is to grow not only individual adventure travel businesses, but also the entire adventure travel industry.
According to John Canning, principle of MediaSherpa and an ATWS speaker, “High-quality digital media can help tell engaging and compelling stories. Savvy companies leverage this valuable tool to capture the moment, create the desire and increase sales to their destination.”
Beyond film and video, photography continues to serve an important role in storytelling. “Photography for many people has become a liberating force that empowers them to overcome the mundane in a society that places more importance on machine production and modern plumbing than it does on art or mystery,” said Colin Prior, Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and a founding member of the International League of Conservation Photographers, who will present Selling the Dream at the Summit. “In short, photography has become a conduit for self-expression and people now not only want to travel to the exotic destinations they see online and in travel brochures, but want to create their own interpretations of the world. Inspiration leads directly to aspiration.”
Contributors to the Milking the Rhino film screening include John Kasaona, Assistant Director, Integrated Rural Development and Nature Conservation (IRDNC), and Keith W. Sproule, Tourism Advisor, WWF-Namibia. Presenting the film festival will be Stevie Christie, founder and director of the Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival.
Host destination for the 2010 ATWS is Visit Scotland and the Cairngorms National Park Authority. Major Sponsor and Official Outfitter of the ATTA, Eddie Bauer First Ascent also will be the Presenting Sponsor of the 2010 ATWS Day of Adventure.
Few delegate seats remain available for the Summit. Registrations are available at www.adventuretravelworldsummit.com.
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About the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA)
Established in 1990, the Seattle-based ATTA (www.adventuretravel.biz) is a global membership organization dedicated to unifying, networking, professionalizing, promoting and responsibly growing the adventure travel market. ATTA members include tour operators, destination marketing organizations, tourism boards, specialty travel agents, guides, accommodations, media and service providers. Host of the annual Adventure Travel World Summit executive trade conferences (www.adventuretravelworldsummit.com), the ATTA also makes possible www.Adventure.Travel, the traveler’s hub of physical, cultural and nature-based adventure travel and guide to trusted tour operators from around the globe.