Tourism officials in Luxembourg say they will allocate more resources to creating videos with stunning drone footage of Luxembourg, which they insist is vital to attracting winged tourists.
“The vast majority of tourists who come here, whether for leisure or business, are of the terrestrial variety,” says tourism and nation-branding consultant Hans Popper. “We’re talking about men, women, children, sometimes their dogs, occasionally other four-legged animals like geckos and hamsters.”
Popper says that the reason for this is because nearly all of the country’s efforts at tourism development are aimed at those who stay on the ground.
“If you look at the promotional material – and I’m talking about posters, YouTube videos, adverts in travel magazines – they all show families standing on the Corniche in Luxembourg City, a couple hiking in the Mullerthal, some kids running through the casemates.”
Popper says such material is ineffective at attracting those who mostly get around by self-propelled flying.
“Dragons, phoenixes, Seraphim and Cherubim – those are angels – blokes with rocket packs or giant propellers strapped to their backs,” Popper said. “These individuals aren’t going to be enjoying Place d’Armes from a bench.”
Gorlak Vynmor, a recently divorced dragon from central Europe, says that she would love to travel to Western Europe more now that she has free time, but she needs to know in advance what a destination has to offer.
“I don’t want to waste ten or twenty hours to fly somewhere and discover that, from the air, the landscape is ugly, or that some quaint village’s roofs all look identical,” she said. “Do you know how many calories I have to consume to fly just one kilometer? A lot. I weigh six tons.”
“I want to know what it’s like to approach a historical city center from a height of around three hundred meters and then to gracefully swoop down and back up again,” she said. “Rivers, green pastures, castles, sure, these all might be beautiful from the ground, but I need to know what they look like from up here.”
Drone videos are the only way to help flying creatures decide which destination they would like to visit, says Popper, himself a drone operator and videographer.
“If these videos have soft focus and majestic, inspirational music, perhaps with a voice actor saying something like ‘you’ll love Luxembourg from the air,’ even better,” he added.
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Originally published by RTL Today
