Travel Back to 1893: Tour Guide Provides Digital Glimpse to the Past
Ray Johnson had an unconventional start to being a tour guide. As a retired cop, he founded HistoryCop, a research company that specialized in Chicago history. Ray decided to share his knowledge of Chicago history with an even larger audience by establishing a non-profit, Friends of the White City, dedicated to providing free tours to interested tourists and locals.
He began by compiling a tour of his favorite moments in Chicago history, the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. He began by providing small, free group tours to people, which he connected to through the Jackson Park Advisory Council. This gave him access to people interested in the Columbian Expedition and its history, but Ray wanted to continue to expand his audience and increase his tour bookings. He turned to VAMONDE to provide a way to reach and grow his audience.
Adding a New Perspective to Tours with VAMONDE
Since Friends of the White City was a non-profit that promoted accessibility, it was important that his stories were readily available and free for anyone to access. VAMONDE was appealing because of the fact that it was free to download the content and to publish for any nonprofit. In addition, the technology had the ability to create multimedia stories and tours available on both web and mobile.
Ray captured images and video from his tour, combined that with his rich information and links to his website. Ray created a multimedia experience that transported visitors and tour-goers to the place and time period. His experience could be easily accessed on the web or carried on mobile for people to experience history in the places that it happened. Through VAMONDE, he could directly share his immersive experiences with his audience on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
The final product was an experience on the 1893 World’s Fair that captures the essence of this historic event and explains why the eyes of the world were in Chicago from May to October of that year. With the use of historic images and videos, a user is transported back in time to the exact moment when the fair was held and can walk through the attractions, the buildings, and gardens in the exact spot where they once stood.
With wonderful digital content, Ray is able to grow his following and increase his tour participation
By marketing this experience through his existing social media platforms and website Ray has increased his content views by over 1200% and created an engaged audience on social media. His digital experience generates between 200 and 300 unique views of his content every week.
Ray plans to continue sharing his tours on social media and on his website but would like to further enrich this experience by providing AR capabilities through VAMONDE that allow the tour-goer to feel like they are witnessing the actual buildings and locations of the World’s Fair. In addition, Ray is planning to promote his tour sign-ups and potentially creating a Groupon that he can share on VAMONDE to encourage participation and bookings.
Learn more about the tools that HistoryCop uses in its approach to expand their audience. Visit info.vamonde.com/ or contact kartik@vamonde.com to see if VAMONDE can work for your tours.
