Avoid the "Geography of Nowhere"

Lisa Brochu, author and tourism consultant, and keynote speaker at the recent Heartland Byways Conference in Kansas, encouraged communities located along scenic byways to be distinct and present their innate character, writes Dale Hogg of the Grand Bend Tribune. When a visitor wakes up in the morning they should know where they are. As Lisa Brochu states, avoid the geography of nowhere.

The Annual Heartland Byways Conference is designed for byway, tourism officials from 10-state region, including: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Nebraska.
Link to: America`s Byways
...
Roger Brooks' Rule No. 16
Great Stories Make the Campfire Memorable: the rule of telling stories.
Your community has stories to tell. They are distinct. They bring people together. They attract visitors.
 from "The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism"
Tip 2 from Roger Brooks.

Community-based Rural Tourism in Costa Rica

ACTUAR, the Costa Rican Association of Community-based Rural Tourism, supports sustainable tourism and the rural lifestyle of Costa Rican families. You can experience the authentic rural lifestyle and indigenous culture while getting involved in local conservation efforts. ACTUAR arose in 2001 from the first Ecotourism Gathering, organized by United Nation’s Small Grants Program. ACTUAR is a member of The International Ecotourism Society and the Rainforest Alliance.

ACTUAR's goal is to show the real Costa Rica, an experience that's not pre-packaged with set photo opportunities. They want one that's run by local citizen organizations.

Is Swanky Ants a killer tourism mAp?

Going on a trip? Check out Swanky Ants.

Here is an interactive map that I think is dynamite. If you want to know what’s going on in your area this is one cool map.

Pins on the map are colour-coded into one of several categories: kids, night life, markets, educational, sports and recreation, community events, and arts & entertainment. Zoom in on the map and you get a calendar listing of events on a panel to the right. The panel lists event name and dates. Click on a pin and you get a pop-out balloon outlining the event with an option to get more details. I clicked on Kelowna, British Columbia, and discovered a Rock Climbing Exhibition at the Okanagan Heritage Museum between 21May-19December, 2009. A really cool feature is the time slider at the top. This slider allows you to bracket dates in which you are interested. The events panel is refreshed.

Want to promote your event? Easy! You can enter details into a friendly form and help build a really useful community-based events map and calendar. It’s the type of platform that I think tourism departments should tap into and adopt.

I anticipate Swanky Ants to grow in popularity as word spreads. If this is the BETA version of the product I am impressed.

My two suggested improvements include:
Colour-code the events shown on the events calendar panel (text or graphic) so that the pin on the map can be better linked to the events listed to the right.

Have a small SwankyAnts logo that can be shared and placed on your own website, to show you are a member of the Army of SwankyAnts.

Swanky Ants provides the platform to create a truly community-based product that has tremendous value. A lot of thinking has gone into this product. It has potential for tremendous growth into other map-based products (hospitals, police stations, information booths, eating places, churches, video, audio etc.) and in licensing/franchising the system to other geographic countries/regions. I also see huge potential for geographically/event-targeted advertising, aside from Google Ads.

Go make a land grab and post your event on this great platform.

Swanky Ants is owned and operated by Swanky Ants Enterprises Ltd. out of Victoria, British Columbia and can be reached at info[at]swankyants.com.