Dottourism.com

Visit My Baltimore - explore the city through the eyes of its residents

02 August 2007 | Dominic Sawyer

A new campaign by Baltimore Tourism gives residents the opportunity to describe their personal highlights of the city.

Site visitors are encouraged to upload videos of themselves in their favourite places at Visit My Baltimore.

My own perception, rightly or wrongly, is a large city in Maryland with high crime levels and an odd sounding baseball team. (A few years living in Chicago gave me an early love for the game) So quite a limited and imbalanced view then!

Personal experiences like this can help alter perceptions and the amateur video production adds to the authenticity. I think it’s a great idea. Stories create emotion and are easy to remember. People buy on emotion and stories are easier to relate to than copy on a DMO or related site.
For anyone who has used video sharing sites like YouTube the layout and functionality should be familiar.

Users create an account, upload a video and give it a description, category and assign it any number of tags. Below each video are links to some of the places mentioned for further reading.

Below that are thumbs of related videos. Site users can sort the 70 or so videos by rating or category. The one above from Steve is his own irreverent tour of the city with an emphasis on food spots. He also shows us where to park for over an hour for a quarter (or 15p!).