The benefits of virtual tour video for hospitality…
While still images and the written word definitely have their place in hospitality marketing, virtual tour videos have unique benefits that are especially effective for marketing in the travel industry.
Why use video?
Video claims a massive amount of internet traffic (some estimates are that in 2020, nearly 80% of all internet traffic was driven by video). Naturally travel-related videos are part of this growth. In 2021 Google found that in a six-month period, 35% of leisure travellers and 56% of business travellers engaged in travel-related video activities.
Who uses video?
People planning on travelling watch video during all phases of their decision-making process, so it is a perfect medium to reach a large number of prospective guests throughout the sales funnel. Of people planning trips that watched travel-related video content:
– 66% watched videos when thinking about taking a trip
– 52% watched videos when thinking about what type of trip they would like to take
– 65% watched videos when choosing a destination
– 54% watched videos when deciding which accommodation to stay at
Video is easy to consume…
A recent article in Psychology Today estimates that the human brain processes videos about 60 000 times faster than it processes written words. This syncs perfectly with ever-decreasing concentration spans, busy lives and natural predisposition to choose the option that takes the least cognitive effort!
People trust video content…
While people generally trust owned media (anything that a brand has produced itself) far less than they trust earned media and user generated content (online reviews, candid traveller photographs and social media posts) and they trust paid media (advertising) the least, video content seems to be somewhat immune to this rule. Nielsen research published in 2015 found that almost half of their respondents completely or somewhat trust video advertisements online.
YouTube has over a billion users world-wide, which accounts for almost a third of all internet users. One of the features that makes YouTube so popular is the simplicity of the embedding function that allows you to display a YouTube video on an external site.
Facebook is a great place to share videos because they can be shared easily within the platform, and have the capacity to reach a large number of Facebook users. Facebook videos to play immediately as a person scrolls by.
Videos play automatically as a user scrolls past it, so the first few seconds of a Facebook video are vital. A Nielsen study found that 47% of the value of Facebook videos was delivered in the first three seconds, and a full 74% was delivered in the first ten.
Therfore the striking visual content and graphics on virtual tour videos are perfect for this platform.
Virtual Tour Videos
Traditional promotional videos are expensive, taking days to shoot and weeks to edit. When they are ready they can be too long for social media or too large for your website.
What hospitaluity businesses need are short videos to play seamlessly on social media platforms and YouTube – perfect for posting and sharing.
Virtual tours videos are one way new technology can help. 360° shots taken at the same time as shooting as the virtual tour are sequenced in to a walk-through video. Each video lasts 60-90 seconds, short enough to work on social media, long enough to inform and inspire patrons, helping to showcase your virtual tour as well as driving more enquiries to your website and winning more likes.
Virtual tour videos feature branding, titles and background music, as well as a satellite map fly in to show the business in its surroundings. They are ready in a few days and cost a fraction of the cost of traditional videos.