Greater Springfield Tourism

Last year, after seeing more than a dozens local tourism operators already using screens in their venues, the chairman of the Greater Springfield Tourism Association (GSTA), Smith Phillips, brought the idea of a Springfield Tourism Screen Network to their annual general meeting (AGM).

"Rushing Waters, the museum, a number of restaurants were already on the system". He was referring to ScreenScape, the network-based service that helps venues create their own professional screen displays.

"They were already sharing content actually. So I thought why shouldn't these screens have some coordination? Why shouldn't we (the GSTA) get together and create some great content that services the tourist and helps our members at the same time"

It wasn't long after the AGM that the GSTA and another half of the 172 operators they represented were also on ScreenScape and up and running with their own screen displays.

"We put in the best of our brochureware" he says. "The rest was just what was freely available, or shared by others on the system. The news feeds, the photos, and the event calendar were all a big hit right off the start. Some are using videos. But every venue I go into now has some kind of interesting way of using their screens. A lot of our members use them for basic signage, or for amusing their guests, or, of course, for promotion. You can see our members are starting to discover the ways they can share content to cross promote their businesses now. It's really something else."

By all accounts the tourists of Springfield enjoyed the screens as well.