Spotting wildlife in Denali National Park, cruising Prince William Sound, flying over glaciers in float planes, meeting sled dogs training for the Iditarod – not what you picture when you think of a conference?
The Adventure Travel World Summit is no ordinary conference. The annual gathering hosted by the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) is a chance for ATTA members to network and learn how to better run their businesses – all through their shared love of adventure travel.
During their annual Summit, the ATTA team needed an easy way to share what was happening with its members – whether they were in Alaska or at home around the world. And, because photos and videos are crucial to adventure travel, they knew visual storytelling was the best way to do that.
The team brought together six storytellers – professional photographers and videographers – to capture every aspect of the Summit. The storytellers sent their incredible images straight to the team’s visual media library on PhotoShelter so everyone on the ATTA team could access the photos and videos and share them immediately on social media.
Watch the video to take a closer look at their time-saving workflow, and to see some stunning views from Alaska!
Powering Visual Storytelling All Year Round
Now that the photos and videos from the Summit are all easily searchable and accessible in PhotoShelter, the ATTA team can use them in marketing efforts throughout the year.
The ATTA team uses PhotoShelter as an archive for all of the organization’s visual content, ranging from a massive collection of adventure travel photos to webinar recordings to videos recapping past Summits.
The ATTA’s remote team can access the cloud-based library from wherever they are and use the photos to engage members.
“When I first signed up with PhotoShelter on ATTA’s site, I was super excited to see all the photos from the last six years that I’ve been taking,” says photographer and Summit storyteller Mark Crawford. “Just seeing them alive and on the site and knowing that people from the ATTA could access those and use them for their own marketing purposes was really, really nice to see.”
The ATTA also grants the host destination access to the photos and videos produced during their events to help them build up their own collection of adventure travel imagery.
“A lot of times, we’ll see maybe more landscape photos or photos on the mass tourism side, but what we try to help with is producing content that is adventure travel specific,” says Murray Bartholomew, Marketing Manager for the ATTA. “We’re delivering a set of really incredible, true to life experiences, in these destinations and the people – they’re not hired models, they’re just there in the field enjoying these activities and the smiles are totally genuine.”
And along the way, Murray shares workflow tips with these member organizations based on his own experience.
“One thing that I always recommend is that people pay attention to their photo resources – it’s easy to hire the photographer and then whatever happens next is often a big question,” says Murray. “It’ll really help with your marketing efforts if you’re spending that time and effort to develop your photo archive.”
