Travel pros selling Aloha State vacations have a new online tool: 360-degree Google Street View Trekker imagery of hiking trails, historical sites and beaches on the Big Island of Hawaii.
The tech giant partnered with the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau (HVCB) last year, using a backpack-mounted version of its Street View mapping equipment to photograph a range of outdoor settings on the Big Island, and last month state tourism officials unveiled access to the imagery on the GoHawaii.com vacation planning website.
“We’ve enjoyed a fantastic partnership with Google in this exciting journey to bring the unique experiences of the Hawaiian Islands closer to the consumer in a fun and interactive way,” John Monahan, HVCB president and CEO, said in a statement.
While Google hopes to eventually expand its maps offering to include trails elsewhere around the globe, the Big Island was the first location where it made use of the backpack-mounted mapping technology, and GoHawaii.com features panoramic imagery from 13 locations on the island, including Hapuna Beach State Park, the Crater Rim Trail at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, the Puu Loa Petroglyphs and Akaka Falls State Park.
Home to molten lava, occasionally snow-capped volcanoes, green sand beaches and lush rain forests, the Big Island can be a tough place to describe to potential visitors. Now agents looking to interest clients in a Big Island vacation can send them to the GoHawaii page and have them virtually hiking over the Kilauea Iki lava fields in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park or admiring the towering North Shore sea cliffs from the Pololu Valley Awini Trail in no time.
There are also a couple of Oahu treks available now on Google maps, including the enormously popular trail up the Diamond Head State Monument, but the HVCB is waiting to dedicate a Google Trekker page for Oahu on GoHawaii.com until a few more hikes are available, which the organization expects will be sometime in the second quarter of this year.
The Google partnership with state officials will ultimately cover hikes and attractions over the six visitor-friendly Hawaiian Islands and eventually be incorporated not only on GoHawaii.com but also at the Hawaii Division of State Parks website.
“Google Trekker imagery is a terrific value-added virtual experience that we can offer the public,” Curt Cottrell, assistant administrator of the Division of State Parks at the Department of Land and Natural Resources, said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to continuing this innovative collaboration and capturing a variety of different sites and hikes across the state.”
For more information about the project, visit Google’s Long Lat Blog.