City Tourist & Convention Bureaus
We began cooperation with City Tourist & Convention Bureaus in June 2003 as we entered a contract with European Cities Tourism (ECT) with over 100 cities as members. The organisation later change name to European Cities Marketing and has over 130 cities as members.
The contract was open for all members to use and Göteborg, Stockholm and Copenhagen was first out to take benefit of the contract.
The contract with ECT was renewed several times but is now replaced with our new contract as of January, 2017 as our new policy is to have one single contract for all our clients and partners.
The new contract for all clients is better than any of our previous Large Volume Contracts in all aspects. The image quality is better, the all inclusive prices are lower, the Terms & Conditions are better and the web hosting services are better.
The new contract is also much easier to use as the City Tourist & Convention Bureaus don't have to do anything at all. No contracts to sign and no project agreement to set up and no administration at all as we take care of everything. They don't even have to touch a single image as we do all web hosting for our images.
The only thing the City Tourist & Convention Bureau has to do is to let the hotels and other members/partners know where they can post their links to the 360Show presentation of their property.
Many City Tourist & Convention Bureaus have a hotel booking system and all these systems have a possibility to post a link. Some bookings systems might need some simple design changes to help visitors quickly find the 360-images.
City Tourist & Convention Bureaus can also get 360-images from banquet & convention venues, city attractions as well as museums and restaurants as our new pricing model now is open for any type of business in a city.
The main benefit for City Tourist & Convention Bureaus is to be able to use 360-images from one single production partner, with a standardized look & feel and also to avoid any potential legal problem regarding immaterial legal rights. A City Tourist & Convention Bureau usually doesn't have the time and resources to check the legal rights for every image published on their websites. This problem is avoided as our images can be used forever and wherever.
There are no costs involved for a City Tourist & Convention Bureau as we charge the individual hotel and other clients directly. The individual clients might place their orders in our system primarily to use the images on Expedia, on their own website or for their email campaigns and they can use the very same images also for the city official website.
City Tourist & Convention Bureaus investing some time informing their members/partners about our services will benefit in 2 ways. They will get valuable content to their website at no cost and they will get free global marketing of the city via our 360CityGuide and 360GolfGuide websites.
A City Tourist & Convention Bureau usually promotes all their partners as they often are financed via tax payers and membership fees. For our own websites we only publish a very short list of max 20 partners in each category. As soon as we have enough partners in a city we will invest our own money in global marketing of that city. That is the core of our business concept and our premier source of revenue is from booking commissions via Expedia and advertising.
Some City Tourist & Convention Bureaus regard us as competitors as we both want to promote a city in the best possible way. This is however not a competition and every city will benefit from a variety of marketing efforts. Our focus is on fine design, unique architecture and exciting locations in a city or destination and this is usually max 3-10 % of all partners in a city.
There is no cost to participate on 360CityGuide or 360GolfGuide except for the cost of the production of images and a performance based fees via Expedia. This is a key element in the nomination process as we want small business with focus on fine design and architecture to have an equal opportunity with major brands to participate.
When we start up a city or destination production we will stay there for a very long time. Our photographers will fly in 4 - 6 times per year to each location and they usually stay for a few weeks each time. We produce many properties at each destination and the images can be used on their own website, on Expedia, on the city official website and many other websites. Our images can be used forever and wherever at no extra cost.
Our nomination and selection process is straightforward and transparent. We welcome the unique and unknown as well as well known luxury brands. We help our target audience to find a shortlisted selection to help them decide where to spend their time.
In a city or destination with hundreds of high quality hotels it is not always easy to find the very best. With new properties being built and many fine old properties being refurbished every year it is a challenge to select the best at any given time. We rely on recommendations from local experts as well as from our own target audience, the experienced traveller.
All venues, large and small, have the right to use the special project price list as long as the productions can be coordinated to be produced at the same time as we produce for the 360CityGuide and 360GolfGuide projects. This way a small hotel, museum or restaurant can benefit of the same high quality 360-images at the same high volume prices as large hotel chains with hundreds of properties.
This is our way to contribute to the cities we produce in.
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