Travel Videos from Geobeats
July 19th, 2007 Posted in General, Travel adventures, Travel industryI’ve been wondering when someone would jump on the opportunity to gather travel videos with quality production and put them in one place. I just got wind of a site called Geobeats that looks promising.
They are producing these in house, from international contributors, and from people in the travel industry. That last one will tell you that you’re not too likely to see stump-armed beggars in New Delhi or dumpster-diving street kids in Manila - only the pretty face the place puts out in its PR materials. More like the fluffy side of the Travel Channel than the BBC.
So as eye candy, how do they stack up? Very well indeed. The player sits in your browser, so there’s nothing to load, yet the images are larger and crisper than what you’re probably used to with YouTube. The production is professional too, with narration and edits that keep things moving.
Most of these travel videos won’t give you a whole lot of in-depth info since they are rather short overview-type pieces, but they can give you a good sense of whether you want to visit that place or not. The site is still in beta, so some destinations (like Hungary, pictured here) only have a few entries. Other destinations already have loads of material. For Argentina there are 7 videos for Patagonia and 34 on Buenos Aires, including “street food” and “public transportation.” If I were sitting in an office in a dead-end job, counting down the days until my next international jaunt, I’d probably be watching Geobeats all day long.
3 Responses to “Travel Videos from Geobeats”
By Rob Meyer on Jul 19, 2007
Thanks for the post Tim. I just checked out some of the videos, and as you said in your post they are very attractive and professional, fun to watch! They don’t seem to show much real insider information, in fact they kind of reminded me of those little box “asides” that pop up occasionally in Lonely Planet guidebooks, but they are interesting to watch if you have the time. Will be a good opportunity to check out those regions you never really here about…
By Ashish Khurana on Jul 20, 2007
Gentlemen,
I am the co-founder and CEO of GeoBeats. Glad to hear you enjoyed the videos and Tim, thanks for the post.
I will talk a bit about our philosophy. We started GeoBeats because we personally struggled to find reliable, down to earth information on international destinations. Through these videos, our goal is to be a visual source of trustworthy travel information. Educating the traveler is much more important for us than entertaining her.
Videos provide three primary benefits: visual cues, local perspective, and insider information. For the destinations that are in the early stages of filming, the benefits are likely to be visual cues and local perspective (interviews). For the ones that are covered in detail like Paris, Mumbai, Buenos Aires, Florence etc., you will receive a lot of insider information as well. For example, if you watch the French Bistro clip in Paris, you get the true essence of a bistro, which can only be communicated by an insider. Another example is the taxi video for Mumbai. Someone has to have experienced Mumbai’s not-so-intuitive taxi system to provide that kind of information. There are many other examples of restaurants, shops, art galleries, travel tips etc., that you won’t find in a typical travel guide.
As you can imagine, producing quality video guides takes time and involves many complex elements. In a very short period, we have filmed in 30 countries, in spite of the massive coordination required for so many concurrent productions. Having said that, we still have plenty of hard work ahead of us.
Please continue to let us know how we are doing.
By tim on Jul 20, 2007
Thanks for the comments Ashish. Obviously I only viewed a fraction of them and some destinations are more detailed than others. Looks like a good start though, so looking forward to seeing more!