TV Host & Travel Guru

San Francisco, CA – March 27, 2011 – Now that e-readers work in daylight, include images and weigh so little, the traditional walking tour has a new platform. San Francisco Bay Area tours from VisualTravelTours (VTT) take the traveler on a dozen different trips in the S.F. region. E-reader guides can be like having a friend show you around.      

eBook Tour Guide

Now available on Barnes & Noble’s NOOK and Amazon’s Kindle as well as most tablets and smart phones, VTT eBook virtual tour guides make the most of each vacation day or free time on business trips.   

According to VTT CEO Marie Profant, “We’re pleased to be launching on the NOOK Color because our eBooks, which we call QuietGuides™, are generally 50% images and ‘pictures are worth a thousand words.’ This abundance of photos allows travelers to become immersed in their journey, confident they are viewing exactly what is in the description.”   

“Without the weight of a traditional book or the complications of an app, e-readers offer convenience for travelers of all ages. With so many eBook tours in our VTT inventory we’re excited that Gartner forecasts e-reader sales will grow by 68% this year,” added Profant.   

SF Bay Area resident and VTT Executive Editor Gordon Burgett describes some of the tour benefits: “You can use them at your own pace, on your own schedule, and even preview the tour, maybe while you’re waiting in the airport or on the train, so you know where you want to spend your valuable vacation time, or extra hours on a business trip.” This format saves tourists the price of a personal guide, and the SF tours supply in-depth narratives of areas like Chinatown, Golden Gate Park, Angel Island, North Beach, Embarcadero & Ferry Building, Sausalito, Berkeley, and more.   

About Visual Travel Tours   

Visual Travel Tours meet the needs of anyone who wants a friend to show them around. VTT has married traditional storytelling and photography with the latest technology, delivering guided tours to any mobile device so that the entire family can share one tour no matter which phone, tablet or e-reader they prefer. Headquartered in Santa Barbara, VTT was started in 2007. Nearly 200 VTT tours of US and international locations are ready to download from the company’s site, www.visualtraveltours.com. Inquiries are also welcome from those interested in publishing their own content, such as instructions, announcements, fiction or non-fiction, in QuietGuide™ format (text and images optimized for mobile devices).   

FAQ: How are VTT tours different from travel apps, blogs or search results?  

 1) Apps offer travelers many useful functions like hotel and restaurant reservations, and time-sensitive info like flight status. VTT offers non-commercial, “ever-green” material, history, legacies, etc. just like museums do, but in our case it’s around neighborhoods, on routes or to off-the-road destinations.   

2) Search results are a fragmented collection of facts that have to be assimilated, and relying upon blogs can result in “hit-or-misadventures.” In comparison, VTT offers a library of professionally written tours, each with a narrative, sequential story line, with what to see along the way. See critic’s remarks:  http://visualtraveltours.com/2010/10/satw-award-winner/   

3) VTT tours are virtual field trips which teachers worldwide might find useful, based on tremendous local response:   http://visualtraveltours.com/2010/11/virtual-field-trips-around-the-world/   

4) VTT content is available cross-platform so that families can tour together, each with the narrative/imagery on the device of their choice. QuietGuide™ tours appear automatically when purchased from e-reader stores (NOOK and Kindle), and can be downloaded from www.VisualTravelTours.com to any tablet or mobile phone that has a PDF reader. Many VTT tours are also available in audio/video versions, for download in all the standard movie and audio file formats.   

# # #   

Media Contact:   

Marie Profant, VisualTravelTours   

805-705-9179             

mprofant@visualtraveltours.com

Theme Park Guides for Kindle and Cell Phones

Taking the family to a theme park this vacation? Be sure to download a behind-the-scenes expert guide to preview where you’re going, lead you around while there, or enjoy with the arm-chair travelers at home. Four Florida theme park VisualTravelTours have just been released for Kindle devices, the most popular product selling on Amazon.com!

Gift of Guided Tours for Mobile Devices

Holiday Sale–save 50% on all downloaded tours until Jan 1, 2011.

Select the tours or purchase a gift certificate good for any tours.

• Madrid onto a flash drive: stash it in your daughter’s stocking
• New York onto a CD: give it to Great-Aunt Grace who doesn’t travel to watch at home
• Cruising Alaska with Disabilities: give it to wheel-chair bound Uncle John
• A California wine tour: your special someone may get the hint and take you!

There’s a city for everyone on your list!

The Santa Barbara Partners in Education organization sponsors volunteer presenters and free resources for County Schools. This month they featured a guest speaker from Visual Travel Tours.

“Wish you could take your students on a field trip but don’t have time or money? Bring the field trip to your students through an innovative new tool for students and classrooms! Visual Travel Tours can provide your students with a multimedia adventure through a wide variety of locations and historical topics. You may be interested in helping your students experience: 

• Ancient Egypt through a tour of the Pyramids and the Sphinx • Nazi Germany’s effects through a tour of Dachau or Munich • Medieval History through Dublin or Barcelona • Ancient Japan: Osaka • California’s Mining History • California Missions: La Purisima • Immigration: Angel Island • National Park tours • Colonial Williamsburg… a wide variety of cities across the globe.” Michelle Magnusson, County Education Office

Guest Speaker Marie Profant was recognized by the Partners in Education Board as their “Volunteer for November”. Marie has scheduled visits to schools to share multimedia travel tours highlighting historical events. The students first explore a local route, learning about “their own back yard” and then each one selects a foreign location and shares with the class some intriguing facts. They can use the school computer lab, or any available mobile device. As educators transition from e-learning to m-learning, this new media demonstrates another level of student engagement.  Schools may contact admin@visualtraveltours.com to learn how to initiate their own Virtual Field Trips.

San Francisco Ferry Building & Embarcadero

Today the prestigious Society of American Travel Writers  Foundation announced the winners of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. In the category “CD/podcast/mobile phone” the  Bronze Award was given to Laura Del Rosso, for her Visual Travel Tour,

 “San Francisco’s Ferry Building and Embarcadero.”

Judges Comments: “Laura Del Rosso introduces old-fashioned tourism to the full power of modern multimedia. She has produced an elaborate but easy-to-understand travel guide to San Francisco that you can put in your computer — save on your iPod — or simply slip into your pocket stored on your cell phone. Wherever you keep it, you’ll be glad you have it. With a quick click you find a photograph of a place you plan to visit, as Del Rosso’s voice describes what you will see and what you should do when you get there, complete with occasional musical interludes. Prefer print? No problem. Del Rosso’s guide includes a map and a series of .pdf files that alternate between photos of destinations and pages of print explaining what you should know and do when you visit each. The copy is concise, and Del Rosso’s advice is spot on. If you follow it, you’ll hit all the highlights and avoid a lot of the hassles. This is a remarkably sophisticated effort — but easy to use. It’s the closest equivalent you’ll find to having a good friend show you around a city she loves. Travel can be tricky. With Del Rosso’s guide, it should be a treat, instead.”

The Caretaker: Halloween Tour

Tired of carefully crafted innocence? This will scare the pants off you!
Originally designed as a three-night Halloween party for Orlando locals, Halloween Horror Nights has evolved into a 23-night spook-tacular. Considered one of the top two Halloween events anywhere, HHN is extremely intense. The crowds, special effects, and sheer terror overwhelm many first-time visitors. In this tour, a former scare actor will take you into the heart of the action. On this tour  you will learn to navigate the event like a pro, staying a step ahead of the crowds. Along the way, you will go behind the scenes into the past, present and future of this unique party.

This tour is perfectly acceptable for any reader, but the destination, Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights, is NOT for kids. There is graphic gore, violence and sexual innuendo. Universal Orlando Warning: This event may be too intense for young children and is not recommended for children under the age of 13.

Visual Travel Tours for Kindle

Dozens of Visual Travel Tours are now available on Kindle, and more are being released each month. Known for our QuietGuides™ (text + images for mobile) our walking and driving tours can be used to preview an area before you travel, as a personal guide as you explore a neighborhood or off-the-beaten-path, and as a souvenir to share with family and friends at home. Since there are many people who enjoy “armchair travel” the Kindle platform is an ideal way to explore before you go, and now they can be used in bright sunlight, so take a VisualTravelTour on a Kindle for your next adventure!

Education Delivered Via Mobile Device

Use cell phones to teach history, geography, English, or the arts? Yes!

Education can be fun & cool? Yes!

All of these guided tours would be perfect for any history class, and several would also be great for geography students. An art series could start with Madrid’s Walk of Art, and if the focus is architecture there is The Art Deco Historical District of Florida’s South Beach.

For this introduction to teachers everywhere, our VisualTravelTour prices are 50% off using the Promo Code BK2S, through September 30, 2010.

Suggested tours:

• Egypt’s Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx
• Historic Rio
• Bodie, California: Mining Town in Pristine Preservation
• Visiting Today’s Mongolia
• Angkor, The Jewel of Cambodia
• Quebec City: Canada’s Charming Nouvelle France
• Maryhill, Guarding the Colombia River Gorge
• Victorian Breckenridge, Colorado
• Imperial Beijing: Tian’anmen, Forbidden City, Jingshan
• China’s Great Wall: Walking on History
• Piazza San Pietro: Were Roman Histories Converge
• California Mission: La Purisima
• Medieval Dublin
• America’s Largest Chinatown, San Francisco CA
• Venice: Incomparable Canals and Calli
• Washington D.C.’s National Mall

Or download the tour(s) of your city, and explore your own backyard for your next field trip.

TIP for Teachers from a Retired Teacher:

QuietGuide

QuietGuideDemo

  We’ve been busy preparing these QuietGuides and will tell you more about each of them soon, but for now here’s a quick list…

Nantucket, The Faraway Isle 

by Alison Abbott

Chicago’s Lakefront Navy Pier

by Brad Olsen

River Cruising In Europe During Tulip Time

by Judy Hazel

Raleigh, North Carolina: Highlights

by John Suddath

Florida’s Sparkling Clearwater Beach

by Kyle Pierson

Far Out Wineries Of Paso Robles

by Ruth Ann Angus

Strolling Memphis’ Beale Street

by Mimmye Goode