Following our tour of medicasts now let’s take a look on the evolution of tourism videocasts and podcasts. I have surfed on the net in order to find some of the new podcast players indulging in the tourism business and came out with three of them:

Podibus (http://www.podibus.com/). This website offers to download videos of reputed tourist places in France, for instance a free video of the chateau de Versailles (40 minutes!) or a video tour of the Versailles’ garden (2 euros). The website is planning to launch on the 26 oppof april a guided visit of the Chateau de Chenonceau in 11 languages (45 minutes for 3 euros). A quite interesting manner to buy a postcard or prepare ourselves for the trip at the Chateau!

Pocket Vox (www.pocketvox.com) is way more international as it podcasts tours of cities spreading from  Marrakesh to St Petersbourg. These visits last for one hour and a half and price at 5 euros.

Cityspeak (http://www.cityspeak.com/) is focusing on three cities Paris, London and Rome with a real in depth approach. However, the prices are way above the former services as an audio podcast (let’s call it tourcast!) costs above 17,80 euros. We can wonder if this service is profitable…

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 All in all we have a service that is marketable and for which people are ready to pay for! So what about combining medicatss and podcasts and see whether or not people are ready to pay. Indeed the implicit value for a user is not the same:

+ for a medicast: get rational information about medical practices. Objective: get to be more acquainted with some practices

+ for a tourcast: visit a place, prepare a holiday. Objective: be enticing enough to spur imagination

+ for a meditourcast: prepare ourselves to a surgery or light intervention. Objectives: get informed about the hospital where te surgery will be performed

… We hence took out pleasure from the equation by mixing both approaches. Is a meditourcast a potential source of revenue from this point of view? Yes, if people are ready to pay a premium to be reassured. Yet, it is conflicting with the duty of a medcial tourism agency whose purpose is to male a travel easier from a practical and psychological point of view