Why 2017 was finally the right time to launch our short travel videos play

Ciné Souk short travel videos

After a year of talk. Serious talk, less serious talk and then serious money talk, we finally launched Ciné Souk short travel videos in late 2016. We’ll be building our offering later this year with more user-generated short travel film series. 

We’ve started small, with a series of video neighborhood guides filmed by locals on their own phones. But Life In My Hood will cover 100 Australian suburbs before the end of the year and it’s this scale that makes the project and those that follow so exciting. 

We believe that 2017 is finally the year of user-generated content. Sure, you think, that sounds reasonable, but then, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

UCG isn’t new, so why is this year special? 

In part, it’s down to technology and I’ll give you an example.

In 2010, Tourism Australia invited people to share their favorite place in Australia by sending a photo. The destination marketing organization expected perhaps 5000 pictures throughout the six-week upload period, but it received more than 30,000. 

Since then, the quality of cameras and the number of people carrying them has exploded and is continuing to grow at an incredible rate. Apple’s ongoing Shot on iPhone campaign highlights the pixel-perfect image quality now available to anyone with the latest smartphone. Android and Google phones have similar capabilities too. 

There are an estimated 1.5 billion HD-camera equipped smartphones now in use globally and that’s expected to rise to 2.5 billion by 2020. That’s one in every three people worldwide. If just one percent made a travel film, that’s 25 million filmmakers.

High-quality footage is increasingly at the fingertips of all who travel. And travelers share their raw video across social channels, a trend that will only rise. Ericsson’s latest Mobility report projects video to account for 75% of mobile data traffic by 2022. 

Yet getting this vision from them and into the hands of others stuck on a dreary train somewhere is the holy grail of all destination marketers. Also, few travelers know how to capture, edit and publish their great footage. 

This is where we come in. Our templates allow anyone with a phone to become a travel filmmaker. Our films are then search engine optimized to maximize reach. In building a video blog publishing company, we are aiming to disrupt the traditional travel journalism commissioning hierarchy. By the middle of this year, destinations will be able to reach out directly to budding filmmakers and source first hand, first-person and first-class video content. 

As Tech.co says: “user-generated content is candid, honest and evergreen.” We think they’re 100% right, especially in the world of travel and tourism where last week’s hotspot is competing with this week’s next big thing – and generally more than one new rival, as travelers try to get ahead of the trend curve.

We’re ready to ride the wave of UGC in 2017 and happy to talk to others about sharing our board and creating short travel videos.

What are Short Travel Videos and why are they so popular?

A short travel video is a short video that showcases a travel destination. This type of video has been popular for a while now and it’s only getting more popular.

The videos are usually between 10-20 minutes long and show the highlights of the destination. They are great for people who want to do some research before they book a vacation or if they just want to get some inspiration for their next trip.

A short travel video will usually have a voiceover that tells you about the destination, showing its most iconic features, and what you can expect from your visit there.

The camera will often be handheld so that it feels more natural and less staged than if it was on a tripod with someone narrating from behind the camera.