Immerse yourself in Sydney’s lush national parks and marvel at the marine creatures at the Sea Life Aquarium—all without leaving your home. With virtual tours becoming the new norm for the travel-starved during this pandemic, local tourism operators have joined forces to launch Sydney360, an online city guide using stunning 360-degree photography from the air, land, and sea.
Co-funded by the City of Sydney, the initiative offers couch travelers the opportunity to tour the capital of New South Wales via a fun and interactive destination guide. In addition to seeing places of attractions up close, they’ll also enjoy dialogue by local experts sharing their favourite hideaways.
Aside from showcasing some of Sydney’s major attractions such as Merlin Entertainment’s Wild Life Zoo, majority of the featured businesses are small independent operators such as Margret Campbell from indigenous tour company Dreamtime Southern X.
The concept is the brainchild of Mark Dalgleish, also owner of Sydney Harbour Boat Tours whose family-run business was devastated by COVID-19. He said: “We were all in the same boat. Hundreds of small businesses and guides who relied almost entirely on international visitors were facing closures and unemployment. So rather than sit back and wait for handouts we got a small group of operators to think outside the box and fight back.”
Free and accessible on any device, the guide allows users to navigate their own journeys to places of interest on beautifully filmed footage done by one of Australia’s leading virtual reality specialists, Ondrej Koucky of Rapturous Media.
He said: “Our aim is to support local tourism operators by adding content to Sydney360, expanding to regional NSW and taking destination360 throughout Australia and to major global tourism hubs.”
More information here,
BLACK FLY BIRD 