NatureEye is born from the Covid-19 pandemic. Faced with the standstill of global travel and the devastating effects on locations that rely on tourism revenue, a team of entrepreneurs got to work imagining a solution to not only help these important sites to safeguard themselves against future unforeseen challenges, but also to make inspiring and otherwise hard-to-reach experiences more accessible to those who are limited by time, money or mobility.
Officially launched in October 2023, NatureEye provides a unique opportunity for consumers to pilot their own 30-minute drone flight at conservation locations worldwide. NatureEye launched with flights at Machu Picchu, Peru; Elephant Sands, Botswana; Hverfjall Volcano, Iceland; Mekong River, Cambodia; Chyulu Hills, Kenya; and Dungeness Spit, United States, a series of destinations to which new locations have been added, for a total of 11 destinations, offering guided tours above breathtaking wildlife, iconic landscapes, and historic sites.
“This is a paradigm change in the travel and entertainment industry,” said Matthew Rabinowitz, PhD, Co-Founder and Chairman of NatureEye when the service was launched. “Everyone should have the chance to witness the world’s natural beauty and iconic locations. NatureEye is bringing these wonderful experiences to life by leveraging recent drone technology, AI image recognition, and high-bandwidth, low-latency data links. Reviews during our beta tests have been super, describing an educational adventure for people of all ages.”
With the pandemic gone, you would think that this type of offer would vanish, as did many of the “virtual tours” created while global travel was impossible, but the fact is that a new problem is arising that makes “virtual tours” not only appealing but a necessity: overtourism.
Back in June 2023, I wrote one article about Lushfoil Photography Sim, an app that uses the power of Unreal Engine 5 to animate true-to-life recreations of beautiful and diverse locations around the world… which you can visit while sitting on your sofa. I wrote, then, that the creation of virtual worlds or virtual twins of real places has also led some to suggest that conventional traveling can be exchanged for virtual tours.
As I noted then, virtual tours are an eco-friendly solution that may not satisfy everyone but may be the only solution for many. Overtourism is, in fact, creating serious problems in popular places around the world, and local authorities are eager to find solutions. Already in 2019 Condé Nast Traveler published an interesting article, “How Technology Can Help Us Tackle Overtourism” about the problem, to which National Geographic added more information, in 2020, with “Is virtual travel here to stay, even after the pandemic subsides?”
We are in 2024, and the service offered by NatureEye makes absolute sense, and while it is geared towards the general consumer, it can be a solution for photographers or videographers who want to explore a specific location, from those being offered, to ascertain its potential for a future visit. If it’s only to capture photography from unique perspectives, then the virtual visit works well, as, after all, there is not much difference between being on the ground at the exact location, piloting your drone, or controlling it from home, in terms of the resulting images.
It takes up to 10 minutes to learn to fly
Pricewise, the experience is very affordable: each flight costs $95, with up to 50% of revenue being shared with local sites, supporting their efforts to conserve natural habitats and wildlife for future generations. You book your destination, have a flying tutorial that takes 5 to 10 minutes and are ready for a 20–25-minute flight, with the help of an experienced copilot that will also be your guide to the location visited… and can even fly the drone if you just want to sit and watch. In the end you can download the photos. Some of the guides are professional photographers who know well the areas and the best ways to get photos with drones.
Besides offering unique perspectives of the areas visited, the service can also be used to scout locations, if you want to know beforehand what they look like. Again, the price is accessible, and you can even share the “flight” with a friend that may be on the other side of the world… another advantage of modern technologies.