New Visitors Website Shows People What’s Cool In The Valley

Yakima Valley Tourism has launched a new interactive website at visityakima.com. The site is designed to draw visitors to the valley with looping video feeds and live social media photo streams. John Cooper President and CEO of Yakima Tourism says it shows people having real experiences that others want to be involved in. “Visitors (to the site) get to see other people having real experiences,” said Jared Yoakum, Yakima Valley Tourism’s Marketing Manager. “There are no stock photos or staged models.  It’s real people doing real cool things here in the Valley.”

When visitors, residents and local businesses post pictures to their Facebook or Instagram accounts, Yakima Valley Tourism can stream those photos directly to galleries all over the new website, Yoakum said.  This feature allows the website to constantly reinvent itself, changing the experience every time someone visits.  “People will get to see a very unique and personal snapshot of life in the Yakima Valley,” he said.

Given the ever-increasing number of users on smart phones and tablets, Yakima Valley Tourism wanted to make sure they were keeping up with the constant changes in technology. The new site is at visityakima.com.