Enjoy England launches podcast city guides

EnjoyEngland.com – the official England tourism website - has loaded twenty-five podcast audio guides to cities and rural areas. The guides which are at enjoyengland.com have been made by BBC freelance travel journalist Tim Richards, who runs the world’s biggest website for on-location travel guides in MP3 format.

Tim operates in his own right offering nearly four hundred MP3 audio guides at heartbeatguides.com. He says the contract to supply enjoyengland.com with audio is a vindication of podcasts as a way of giving travel websites a lively, compelling and information-packed format.

“Why would anyone who is trying to sell the unique atmosphere of their country or destination still have a silent website in 2008 ?” asks Tim Richards.

Enjoy England’s general manager for marketing, Amanda Smyth, agrees that podcasts add very substantially to video and text information on their website.

“Podcasts are an excellent way of conveying the colour and the atmosphere of our cities and country areas … that intangible something that shouts out ‘this is Liverpool or Sussex or London’ ” says Amanda.

“Podcasts can be very lively if they’re made on location as these ones from Tim Richards all are. They also contain large amounts of factual information in a format which is perfect for the ipod generation. But at the same time year on year we can see increasing numbers of older people listening to audio on their computers, mobile phones and MP3 players.

“Now we can give everyone compelling tourism content to add to the music on their ipods,” says Ms Smyth.

Tim Richards has also made podcast guides for top American tourism areas like Minneapolis, The Quad Cities of Illinois and Valley Forge, Pa. In the UK Tim has worked for the marketing-savvy Torquay area, and has also made a series of low budget videos for Torquay to be delivered soon via YouTube. He has also made podcasts for award-winning VFB Holidays, and resorts in Europe.

A further batch of fifteen travel podcasts for enjoyengland.com is under discussion.