Liveview365 gives you the opportunity to appear on our webcamsmap, a unique, comprehensive central resource of live scenic webcams around Great Britain.
Live scenic cams provide a continuous, captivating campaign, to promote your business 365 days of the year.
Liveview365’s PictoLinks™ panels provide direct links to your business’s web information. You can find more detailed information on the demonstration map below — but the key point is that they link straight to your own website. This is important, and unusual. Many large portals try to keep the visitor on their site and away from direct contact with the businesses that are providing them with information and profits. We are different. We are open and transparent about where our information is coming from and you can get in contact with us quickly and easily.
We are a small, flexible and responsive company. Our PictoLinks™ panels are bespoke. You can, if you wish, opt to customise your PictoLinks™ panel.
Webcamsmap is part of a family of industry-specific ‘Locatory’ maps. These are curated through our own research, not by algorithms. You can appear on any of our maps .
We want to help people during these challenging times of travel restrictions, and beyond. Watching live scenic cams can reduce feelings of anxiety and isolation. They provide relaxation and escapism. Live streams are compelling viewing – what will happen next?
We want to increase the number, coverage and quality of webcams. With your help we can do this. In turn you are appearing on a platform which engages people and brings repeat viewing. Viewers tend to browse around the country and find several favourites which they will revisit regularly.
Our webcamsmap provides links to around 750 live scenic webcams. This may appear a lot at first glance, but when you look more closely you will see that coverage is poor, some cams are seasonal, and many are not of the best quality. There are ‘cam hotspots’ , but many beautiful and interesting places that you cannot currently visit virtually. However, there are over five million CCTV/security cameras around the country, some of which could be redeployed as scenic cams.
There are two ways
1. Redeploy or add a webcam at your premises.
(This is the quickest solution to increase the live scenic views around Britain.)
Many businesses located in areas of interest already use CCTV cameras and could redeploy one for public viewing (promotional use). These include business buildings and headquarters, house builders’ sites, farm shops etc. Alternatively, an additional camera could be added to the existing CCTV operation covering an area of interest to the public.
Or if suitable, images from an existing CCTV camera could simply be used.
2. Sponsor an existing scenic webcam on the webcamsmap
Many of the businesses who currently use webcams for promotional purposes meet the cost from their marketing budgets. Other organisations, mainly in the wildlife and tourism sectors, find it increasingly difficult to fund their webcams as they are reliant on sponsorship or donations at a time when people are cutting back on unnecessary spending. By sponsoring a webcam you provide crucial support.
Examples of SponsorLinks™ Panel and PictoLinks™ Panel
The SponsorLinks™ Panel layout provides the maximum space for a sponsor to broadcast their brand over three web sites: webcamsmap, localnewsmap, visitorinfo.locatory.
The SponsorLinks™ Panel package price is £1,000. This donation is split between the webcam operator and LiveView365.
Please e-mail to learn more about this unique opportunity to increase the support for real-time real-life viewing.
The PictoLinks™ Panel is a bespoke pop-up which includes up to sixteen different web links and is available to both existing and new location owners, on any of the Intamap maps. Unlike other mapping providers who automatically populate their map location data using algorithms, Intamap prefers to configure its maps using data and information provided by location owners. Please e-mail to learn more about how bespoke PictoLinks™ Panels can help your business.
A recent survey by Rightmove has rated St Ives the happiest and friendliest place in the country. St Ives also has the most live scenic cams of any town, with eleven cams covering both the harbour and well known beaches. Seven visionary businesses have installed these cams which means you can visit St Ives virtually in real time, 365 days of the year. It has recently been announced that the G7 Summit will take place in June at nearby Carbis Bay. You can view the beach either on the above map or here
The same survey rated Perth the happiest place in Scotland. But in contrast with St Ives, the Fair City currently has no live scenic cams, despite being an equally beautiful part of Britain. Similarly, along the Tay we find that Dundee has no live scenic cams showing off its £1 billion remodelled Waterfront, which includes landmarks such as the Tay Rail and Road bridges, Captain Scott’s RSS Discovery, and the spectacular V&A Dundee Design Museum. There are many large companies in both these cities with CCTV which could be redeployed to provide live views and promote the area, taking a leaf out of the book of the visionary businesses of Devon and Cornwall.
A report by Comparitech in July 2020 estimated there to be over 650,000 CCTV webcams in use in and around London. Only a handful of these are scenic webcams, the rest are security and traffic cams. The dozen or so scenic cams include the Abbey Road zebra crossing, the view from the IET of the Thames, and Kings Cross. In the past there were many more around famous landmarks including Tower Bridge, Tower of London etc. At an estimated average cost of £500 to purchase and install a basic webcam, businesses in London have invested over £300 million on security and traffic webcams but almost nothing on live scenic webcams which would promote the city’s sights and sounds to potential visitors. Undoubtedly this will change as, according to a recent report, tourism spending in central London is set to fall by £10.9bn as a result of Covid-19. Money will have to be spent in attracting tourists back to the city and live scenic cams have a part to play in this marketing effort.
Nessie the Loch Ness monster is never far from the news having already received a mention in the US election and made an appearance on sonar and film in the last few months. The latter prompted an invasion of another historic site, Castle Urquhart, situated on the banks of the loch in a prime site for Nessie-viewing. Ironically one of the now-lost web cams was situated at this site. Now only one webcam looks over the loch and disappointingly it is currently broken (January 21). It is estimated that Nessie attracts around half a million tourists to the Highlands, bringing over £40 million per annum to the local economy. Nessie is a monster money-maker for the Highlands. It is disappointing that the loch is not ringed with live webcams to attract more Nessie spotters and generate more visitor interest in the area. A well-known search engine has spent thousands of pounds on creating a “loch view” service but it cannot replicate the real-time, real-life experience available from a live webcam.
One of the undoubted benefits of live webcams is they allow for up close viewing of the world of wildlife. There are amazing views of kittiwake nests atop the Baltic building in Newcastle, the cheeky puffins on Coquet Island and osprey nests in some of the most beautiful but remote areas of Britain. Typically, many of these wildlife webcams only operate during the summer season and are shut down for the winter. However, with the colder, darker months fostering anxiety, isolation, and Seasonal Affective Disorder these cams could provide a year-round boost. Our research shows that the seasonal shut-downs are due to a lack of funding. Many of the wildlife organisations publicise this problem and request donations to keep the cams operating during the summer.
There are currently only a few council or government scenic live webcams. It is not yet clear from our research why these authorities, who operate large numbers of security and traffic cameras, do not invest in scenic webcams - these offer a means of piquing the interest of potential visitors, who may then go on to travel to the area and spend money in the local economy. The UK Government owns over 13,000 buildings throughout the country. It is very likely that these buildings will be ringed with security cameras. If ten per cent of this total had one security camera redeployed as a live scenic webcam the number of such cams in the Britain would more than double.
As technology moves forward, national tourism authorities are considering new ways of allowing potential visitors to preview a place of interest. VR is one such technology. It appears to offer some benefits by overlaying information on pre-recorded visuals, thereby helping first-time visitors familiarise / orientate themselves within a new area. Whilst there are positives with this initiative, the technology is currently expensive and cumbersome and the experience is probably more akin to watching a modern hi-tech movie. In contrast, webcams, especially the increasingly popular panning tilt and zoom versions with increased/changing field-of-vision, offer a real-time, real-life experience. Most people now carry a smart phone at all times, enabling these live scenic webcams to be viewed anywhere and anytime.
Live scenic cams provide a continuous, captivating campaign, to promote your business 365 days of the year.
