Skift Take

Expect Google Glass to crop up in more tourism marketing campaigns and as a reward of social sweepstakes. It makes a destination look tech-savvy, puts played-out attractions in a new light, and attracts potential visitors that a destination might otherwise miss.

Florida beaches want to give visitors a hands-free way to capture their vacation.

The visitor and convention bureau representing the beaches of Fort Myers and Sanibel invited five Google Glass Explorers to test whether glass is the solution to seamless uninterrupted photo sharing.

Google Glass Explorers are the approximately 10,000 people that were selected to test an early version of the device.

The resulting video (embedded below) gives viewers a good idea of how Google Glass could change the travel experience. The participants took photos and shared them online while kayaking, parasailing, cooking shrimp, and visiting Thomas Edison’s winter home.

The benefits of traveling with glass are best explained by Google Glass Explorer George “Loki” Williams. In the video, he says:

“The fact that you can take a picture or a video with the touch of a button or a voice command, that’s ten seconds that you would be pulling your phone out, opening up the camera app. Or pulling out your camera, taking the lens cap off, framing the shot. All of these things take away from getting that spontaneous shot.”

The Florida tourism board is also running a “Find Your Island #throughglass” sweepstakes on Facebook. Once Google Glass becomes commercially available, one fan will win a pair of the glasses and a free trip to Fort Myers and Sanibel Island.

Tourism marketing firm MMGY Gobal (which Skift has collaborated with on stories) executed the Fort Myers and Sanibel campaign. Watch the full video featuring the five Google Glass Explorers below:

smartphone

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Tags: florida, google glass, marketing, social media, tourism

Photo credit: A screen grab showing what Sanibel Island looks like from behind Google Glass. The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel / YouTube

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