I never stop being amazed with the amount and diversity of talented people there are in our community.

Some time back, I met with an interesting and hard working fellow name Elie (Eliecer) Marchante, who held a vision of a virtual tour business.

After many months of hard work and determined slogging, Marchante turned his vision into a reality, starting up his impressive online business Virtual British Columbia Tours (vbct.ca).

His company provides business owners with a virtual tour technology of their business, allowing potential customers and clients to watch a 360-degree view of the facility.

With a click of the computer mouse viewers can ‘tour’ any Marchante client business—restaurant, hotel, winery, salon, gym, etc.

In addition, a company can embed their virtual tour onto their own business website as part of a top-notch marketing tool.

Marchante’s company takes the recently developed ‘street-view’ concept directly inside the doors of business giving customers a sneak preview of what to expect before physically venturing into the store or facility.

“The response by business owners, once they see what I can do to assist them, is heart warming. Virtual Tours takes the potential client or customer into the business from the comfort of their easy chair and home computer,” he smiles.

Of real note, however, is that very recently, his hard work and resilience paid off. Marchante’s Virtual British Columbia Tours is now part of one of Google’s project: Google Business Photos.

Wow. That is a huge feather in his cap and well deserved.

Google recently launched a Business Photos Program in Canada to help businesses attract customers, and went in search of specially trained photographers, of which Marchante is now a member.

His generated panoramas of businesses interiors may be seen on Google Search and Google Maps, as well as Google+ Local pages. When potential customers search for a business by name on Google, they will see the images displayed directly on the search results page.

Businesses get higher visibility when consumers search on Google maps for a particular type of business in a geographic area, since the local listings are located on a map at the top right of the results page.

This is a superb way of displaying your business decor, ambience, and other unique qualities of your business (menus, product selection, and more).

The new program is already utilized in some selected cities within various countries including Canada, U.S., Australia, New Zealand, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom. So the new virtual tour business trend is certainly about to take off.

Most Kelowna and area businesses can participate in the program. For more info contact Marchante at info@vbct.ca, go to his website at vbct.ca or call him at 250-470-1063.

For more information go to http://maps.google.ca/help/maps/businessphotos

by Charlie Hodge

Link to Capitalnews article

More details about the Google Business Photos project

Visit Charlie Hodge Website