The top three most popular tourist attractions will get a visit from the Street View trike and car in the coming weeks. The images it collects will be carefully stitched together with the aim for them to be available in Street View on Google Maps, in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™.
The three winners reveal South Africa's passion for the big outdoors:
- Chapman's Peak and the Cape coastal routes
- Kruger National Park
- Blyde River Canyon.
These tourist attractions will be put right on the virtual map, tempting people at home and overseas to explore South Africa's scenery and landmarks in an exciting new way, over the internet.
Additionally, businesses and tourism organisations around the country can benefit from the Street View technology by embedding Google Maps directly into their websites for free. Here they can add layers of information such as:
- parking locations
- viewpoints
- details of upcoming events etc
Other sites on the voting shortlist will also be added to Street View.
Google and South African Tourism started the campaign two weeks ago by asking the South African public to vote online and on their mobile phones for their favourite tourist treasures.
In addition to the Cape coastal routes, Kruger and the Blyde River Canyon, the voting shortlist of 20 included:
Stephen Newton, Country Manager for Google South Africa said,
"We've seen a tremendous amount of enthusiasm from people to get their favourite places onto Street View, including via our voting pages and via suggestions over radio. Now it's down to our super fit tryclists and our drivers to get cracking and photograph these places so that curious naturalists, tourists and students all over the globe can soon admire the country's heritage and plan their next holiday."
What the Winners said
Calvyn Gilfellan, CEO of Cape Town Routes Unlimited:
"This is stunning news! The Cape’s coastal routes are indeed extraordinarily beautiful and very popular among visitors – from Chapman’s Peak, the R44 around Hangklip and the iconic Cape Peninsula routes to the rugged Cape West Coast, Cape Agulhas where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet at Africa’s southernmost point, and the evergreen Cape Garden Route. We’re excited that web users across the world will soon be able to do virtual road trips along some of these routes, through Google Street View. In this way, our 2010 FIFA World Cup™ visitors will be able to explore Cape Town and the Western Cape’s travel beauty and diversity and see how they can go beyond the 90 minutes of the soccer match to fully experience the destination next year."
William Mabasa, HOD: Public Relations, Kruger National Park:
"We are delighted to be one of the winners of the Google Street View project and would like to thank everyone who supported us by voting. Kruger is already an iconic South African destination, and a great showcase for our country's rich wildlife and ecological diversity. Street View will now bring Kruger to even more people around the globe, just at the click of a mouse, and we are looking forward to our debut".
Mr Charles Ndabeni, CEO of Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency:
“The Blyde River Canyon continues to be one of the country's most recognised and spectacular locations, attracting more than 500 000 visitors a year. We’re delighted that it will be part of Google Street View, creating a meeting point between South Africa's natural heritage and Google's latest technology. We hope that South Africans and people around the world will now enjoy visiting the Canyon virtually."
