Take a walk in all of South Africa’s parks with Google Street View
Search giant Google announced recently that all South Africa’s national parks and reserves were available on the Google Street View platform. A year in the making, the project aimed to create 360˚ imagery of the country’s wildest areas and comprised 206 South African volunteers.
“The hundreds of volunteers who helped along the way, proved to be truly passionate about showing the best of South Africa through their participation in the loan program,” said Magdalena Filak, Program Manager for Google.
Collectively, the volunteers trekked 900 km on foot in all nine provinces, explored 170 new trails, and encountered lions, cheetahs and elephants on foot. “The Trekker camera is a 22-kg custom-made backpack, fitted with 15 cameras pointing in all directions. The on-board technology plots the camera’s exact location on the trail. While recording, the camera takes a 360∞ photo every two seconds. It’s basically the off-road equivalent of Google’s Street View cars,” said Andre Van Kets of loan program partner, Drive South Africa.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization heritage sites, such as iSimangaliso Wetland Park, as well as Mapungubwe Hill, the Richtersveld and Drakensberg Mountains are some of the natural environments on display. All of South Africa’s 19 national parks are covered on the platform, which also has built-in functionality to give tourists an overview of the country’s natural heritage.
“Harnessing technology allows SANParks to showcase the 19 South African national parks like never before. Google Trekker allows South Africans and foreigners to explore and discover what the different parks have to offer. We are really excited that this introduces a new dimension to planning a trip and what better way to do it than through a virtual itinerary which you can then make reality,” said Janine Raftopoulos, SANParks Head of Communications. South Africa took fourth position - moving up from last year’s fifth position - when it comes to being an appealing destination for Muslim travellers, according to the Mastercard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index 2017, held in Jakarta.
With an index score of 53,6, this placed South Africa behind Singapore, Thailand and the United Kingdom of Non-Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) markets for the third consecutive year while Malaysia kept the pole position for OIC and overall. Indonesia moved up to third place in the overall rankings.
The index, which covers 130 destinations, showed a number of non-OIC destinations in Asia move up the rankings; a result of the concerted effort to adapt their services to cater to and attract the Muslim travel market.
The rankings saw Hong Kong make up the top five for the non-OIC destinations, with Japan moving up two places to take the sixth spot with Spain entering the top 10 for the first time and Singapore remaining the only nonOIC destination in the overall top 10. Over and above, Indonesia, Japan and Taiwan saw the biggest improvements in ranking on the overall top 10 list.
The research showed that the Muslim travel market would continue to grow at a fast pace with the sector estimated to grow to $220 billion (about R2 937 billion at R13.35/$) in 2020 and expected to grow a further $80 billion (about R73 285 billion at R13.35/$) to reach $300 billion (about R247 825 billion at R13.35/$) by 2026.