Prince George, B.C. – Northern B.C. Tourism  will have an opportunity to have  some of the region’s  beautiful back country on  Google’s ‘Trek Page’.  (at right, ‘Trekker’ equipment – image courtesy Google and Northern B.C. Tourism)

The Google Trekker,   a piece of equipment that  is portable, but can  take the same kind of images  already  available  on Google Earth’s ‘street view’,  will be  used in June, July and August of next year, opening the window for ‘virtual visitors’ to see  sights they normally may not be able to access.

Northern B.C. Tourism Executive Director, Clint Fraser, says  “They ( Google) take applications into their  program, which is a fairly new program and  they look to different  destination organizations  and marketing   entities to generate the content they need.”  Northern B.C. Tourism  submitted an application, and  it was accepted which is  pretty impressive considering some of the other destinations already  available on Google’s ‘Trek Page’ include the pyramids of Giza , Venice  and the Galapagos Islands.

The “Google Trekker”   can be mounted in a back pack style, and can be  taken to  many areas not  accessible by roads. ” I think  it’s really an opportunity for a place like Northern British Columbia to  really  capture our  greatest tourism asset which is our vast wilderness and landscapes and share them virtually with the world.  It’s an  important program to us because we know that travellers  are much more technologically savvy when planning a vacation and they look deeper  into the potential destinations  that they’re interested in before they make decisions and  this tool will really provide user the ability to   experience  some of our back country and  wilderness virtually and help influence  their decisions to come to Northern B.C.”

The Northern BC Tourism  team will be  trained on how to use the ‘Trekker’  then   will have the equipment for a full three months ” Three months is a pretty decent duration  to get out  into the back country and capture some really good content” says Fraser.

Google supplies the  equipment, and then it’s up to Northern BC Tourism  to  head out and capture the images.   Fraser says  they haven’t yet decided on which areas will be  featured “Over the next couple of months that’s sort of what our task will be, to really lay out the plan, but we are really looking forward to building this plan into something substantial, so we’re really excited about the opportunities with it for sure.”