What Is Visual Storytelling?

For 32,000 years people have drawn pictures but we’ve actually written for only 5,000 years. J.K. Rowling, arguably the most successful author of our generation, admitted that she actually drew Harry Potter’s world before she even wrote it.

What does this mean for hotels? It means that storytelling is in our nature and visual storytelling can convey an experience better than just text alone. How to do it?

Darlene Rondeau, VP of Best Practices at Leonardo, discusses in this video the importance of visual storytelling and how to share content and rich media that engages travel shoppers.

If you’d like to read the transcript instead, here’s what she explained:

“For 32,000 years people have drawn pictures but we’ve actually written for only 5,000 years. J.K. Rowling, arguably the most successful author of our generation, admitted that she actually drew Harry Potter’s world before she even wrote it. As Dan Roam points out, thinking in pictures is really in our nature and our verbal mind doesn’t work without our visual mind.

Storytelling is defined as the interactive art of using words and actions to reveal the elements and images of a story while encouraging the listener’s imagination. Stories are anecdotes and context that provoke an emotional response. In other words, things that are happening and a reason to care. And it’s a combination of pictures and narration, and of course the audience. The audience wants to be entertained and inspired and informed importantly, and when they’re these things, they will share.

So within a hotel environment your anecdotes are the experiences, the dining, the lounge and meeting space, the staff. And then offsite, there are things like local attractions, entertainment, tours, nightlife, festivals and so on. And then context is emotional. It’s excitement, romance, fun and health and adventure. When you combine these two things, the anecdotes and the context, what you have is a story. You can put the anecdotes and context to real use with visuals, photos, virtual tours and videos. Today, people want information in quick bursts since visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text is. So using visual stories is a really effective way to communicate with your customers quickly.”