ISO professional feedback: My Eco-Tours On YouTube?

[Enchanted Island Eco Tours Inc.]

Hello :)

My Name is Michael Grasso I am the CEO of Enchanted Island Eco Tours Inc. located on the island of Puerto Rico!  The 18th of May will mark our 14th year in operations, but for years we have been dependent on third party tour desks, FIT sales & DMC to gain most of our traffic, but for the last two years I have been driven to get to the client first...... driect sales one of several steps I have taken on my owen is the development of YouTube presentations of our top two selling tours.

My question is to have some one in the industry view the videos and give me insight and an opinion on the content and if changes need to be made what would they be?

Thanks for your assistance:

YouTube:

Rainforest Nature Walk to Waterfall Adventure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWtI6fHscEU

Bioluminescent Bay Kayak Adventure:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCUxQ1Avdyw

Michael S. Grasso

Enchanted Island Eco Tours Inc.

CEO

[e-mail]

[Max Pesling]

Hola, Michael! Having visited and written on Puerto Rico a number of times, and enjoyed both a bioluminescent bay cruise and a visit to El Yunque, I was happy to review your videos. And there's some great stuff in there -- I sure wish I'd been on one or both of these when I was down there last! Muy chévere.

Now, I'm not in the travel industry per se, but I have been writing and editing travel for years, and both from that standpoint and as a travel-obsessed member of the general public, I'd like to offer a bit of constructive criticism. Over the years, both as writer and editor, I've found that especially given declining attention spans out there, most of us as content providers need to be as concise as possible. So for starters, I strongly feel 10 minutes per video is too long. There's some really great stuff in both, but what I'd suggest is to edit each down to no more than 5 minutes -- and even a little shorter wouldn't hurt.

In particular with the canoeing vid, there's just too much blow-by-blow on the orientation, both with the talk in front of the stream and the actual on-street orientation itself -- it's almost like watching fine print in video form. I would focus first and foremost on giving a tantatlizing taste of the experience itself, with people in kayaks and so forth, and edit down the rest. With the Yunque video, the guide explanations -- fascinating though they are -- go on too long. Give a couple of good sound bites per stop, then move on. But by all means keep the waterfall in its entirety!

That, by the way, may be one reason why no one so far has answered your request. 20 minutes of video watching may seem to many people, as much as they'd like to help, as too much to give. Similarly, members of the general public -- your target audience -- are also mostly busy people, and they may well tune out after 2-3 minutes. Especially in the case of the canoing vid, that means all your best stuff may never get seen.

I wish you well -- your tours sound fantastic, and your videos, again have some really great stuff in them. But for best results, re-edit and shorten!

I'll definitely let you know the next time I'm down in Borínquen -- and I hope it's soon!

best of luck...
Max

[Max Pesling]

You're quite welcome! :-)