Google Street View: destinations have more control than they may realise

After more than 20 years, Google Maps has become second nature for many people, used in everyday life to find somewhere, work out a journey or check what is nearby. That familiarity carries over into travel, where Maps can be used throughout the journey, from researching and planning a trip to working out what to do and how to get around once there. For destination and digital marketers, Google Maps has therefore long been one of those platforms that needs to be part of the marketing mix, but its familiarity can also mean some of its usefulness is taken for granted.

At the most basic level, there is the digital hygiene of making sure locations are correctly pinned, listings and visitor information are accurate and up to date, and that the routes people are being given actually make sense. Even that can become a sizeable job across a destination, and not every location will necessarily be checked as regularly as it should be.

But there is another part of Google Maps that can be easy to overlook: what visitors actually see when they start exploring a destination through Street View.

What are visitors actually seeing on Street View?

For some visitors, Street View is a practical tool that allows them to see where they will be walking or driving and answer questions that written visitor information cannot always address. For people who are more visually led, there is real value in being able to look around for themselves rather than relying on lengthy descriptions to explain what a route or place is like, while others simply enjoy virtually exploring somewhere as part of researching a trip.

There is research to suggest that what people find on Google Maps matters beyond getting them from A to B. A 2025 study of 358 tourists using Google Maps found that when the information people encountered was recent, credible and clear, they enjoyed using the platform more, and that more positive experience was linked with whether they would revisit or recommend a destination. That should give destination marketers pause, because it suggests that the experience of using Google Maps can become an extension of how somebody experiences the destination itself.

Think back to your own experience of Google Maps sending you to the wrong location, giving you information that is out of date or just not working when you need it. The research does not tell us that a bad Google Maps experience automatically translates into a negative perception of the destination, but it is not difficult to see how that frustration can start to colour somebody’s wider experience, particularly when they are somewhere unfamiliar and relying on the information in front of them.

Street View can help address some of that uncertainty by allowing people to see a route or location for themselves, although it can expose another gap when the visual journey stops before the physical one does. A road may be covered almost all the way to a visitor location, for example, only for Street View to disappear when the journey continues onto the walking trail or coastal path that somebody most wants to see.

2024 research into Street View use found people using it to scout places before physically travelling there, while others explored destinations out of curiosity; one participant who wanted to visit Orkney but could not afford the trip at the time used Street View to explore it virtually instead.

This becomes particularly relevant for screen tourism, where people motivated to visit somewhere they have seen in a film or television production may be planning a very specific journey to a filming location, including along roads, walking trails or coastal paths. Being able to see that route can help them understand what the journey involves, while for some fans virtually exploring the location, recognising places connected to a production or seeing where they will eventually be walking can also become part of the enjoyment of researching the trip.

More control over Street View With Your Own Capture

Street View can still be treated as something destinations largely inherit from Google, where the existing imagery and gaps are simply what there is to work with. What may be less widely understood is how much the contribution model has developed, with organisations and individuals now able to capture compatible 360 imagery and publish it themselves.

Bermuda shows what a proactive approach can look like at destination scale. Bermuda Tourism Authority commissioned Street View capture to strengthen its presence on Google Maps, improve local-business discovery and allow potential visitors to explore the islands while planning or thinking about a future trip. By 2022, the authority reported that imagery uploaded through the project had received more than 8.4 million views.

That proactive approach does not necessarily mean embarking on a destination-wide refresh. It could start with identifying priority visitor locations where imagery is missing or noticeably out of date, particularly where a destination knows interest is increasing or the visitor experience has changed since Google last captured it. The important shift is recognising that Street View coverage is something destinations can review and, where there is a good reason to do so, actively contribute rather than treating the existing imagery as fixed in place until Google updates it.

And there is another opportunity that may be even less obvious: Street View does not have to stop where the road does.

Remember Street View isn’t a promotional video: Google recommends high-resolution 360 imagery and requires the surrounding environment to remain clearly visible, with only limited space for superimposed graphics. Heavy filters should be avoided and imagery should remain a clear, accurate representation of the place. Good capture conditions matter, but the aim is useful and realistic coverage rather than creating a polished destination advert. Capturing the imagery does not guarantee that everything submitted will appear exactly as intended on Google Maps, with contributed content still subject to Google’s processing, quality requirements and policies.

What happens when the road ends?

The second opportunity, which some destinations may be even less aware of, is that this does not have to be limited to roads. Anyone who regularly uses Street View will probably recognise the frustration of following a journey visually only for the imagery to stop just as the route leaves the road and reaches the part they actually wanted to investigate. Google introduced its backpack-mounted Trekker in 2012 specifically to take Street View into places vehicles could not reach, while today’s compatible 360 cameras have made capturing walking trails, coastal paths and other harder-to-reach routes much more accessible.

That means destinations no longer have to assume that a trail missing from Street View will always remain that way, or that they can only work with whatever Google has already captured. Some tourism organisations have already taken that opportunity to extend Street View into places Google’s cars cannot reach.

The Wales Coast Path provides a particularly useful example. The path stretches for 870 miles, but the more interesting lesson is why the organisations involved saw value in putting these routes onto Street View rather than the scale of the exercise itself.

Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority wanted prospective walkers to be able to preview routes and judge whether they were suitable in terms of terrain and cliffs, while also allowing people to virtually explore more remote and lesser-known stretches of coastline. Two wardens spent 28 days capturing its Coast Path with Google’s then 25kg Trekker, and Street View remains part of the visitor information available around the route today.

Street View capture has become much lighter

Pembrokeshire Coast National Park captured its Coast Path for Street View with Google’s 25kg Trekker backpack. Today, destinations can buy commercially available 360 cameras supported for Street View publishing that weigh only a few hundred grams. Proper route planning, GPS data, processing and upload are still required, but the shift to lightweight equipment you can buy yourself has significantly lowered the practical barrier to capturing trails and harder-to-reach locations.

There are examples elsewhere and at different scales. Destination British Columbia created 176 Street View Treks across wilderness locations including the Sunshine Coast Trail, Blackcomb Mountain and Pacific Rim, while Bhutan’s tourism authority worked with Google on more than 2,600 kilometres of coverage and cited the ability for visitors to see ground conditions and have a better idea of what their journeys would involve.

Separate research involving 320 participants at Dinghu Mountain in China has also found a positive link between virtually experiencing a 360-degree mountain walk and intention to undertake the real walk, although this was not research into Street View itself.

Why what visitors see on Street View matters

A 2026 study of 519 non-local visitors to Macao combined visitor surveys with more than 1,300 Google Street View sampling locations and found that greener, more visually open environments were associated with more positive destination perceptions and satisfaction, while more enclosed environments were linked with higher perceived risk. The study does not prove that Street View itself changes those perceptions, but it does reinforce for destination marketers: what visitors can see and understand at street level can play a role in how they perceive a destination.

Why invest in Street View?

When National Trails commissioned around 470km of the King Charles III England Coast Path to be captured for Street View, the rationale was to help visitors preview terrain, facilities and viewpoints and plan their journeys with greater confidence. The scale and speed of this project are notable too. The imagery was captured in 22 days, showing that even an ambitious stretch of trail can be tackled within a concentrated capture period.

But the bigger lesson is that Street View is increasingly being treated as part of the visitor information infrastructure, rather than simply something Google provides. The new imagery is being incorporated into route information for the King Charles III England Coast Path. Somerset county in southwest England has separately developed 360 virtual tours to help address uncertainty around terrain and accessibility before people travel. 

For destinations unsure of the value of updating Street View, the England Coast Path and Somerset examples show how 360 imagery can help visitors judge terrain, accessibility and what a journey involves before travelling, reducing some of the uncertainty around visiting somewhere unfamiliar. That value applies to visitors more widely, but if film or television is creating new demand for particular locations, it can provide an additional reason to look again at whether the existing Street View coverage is doing enough, and whether it is time to reconsider the wider strategy around Google Maps.

Why this becomes particularly interesting for screen tourism

For screen fans, being able to see a route can be useful for many of the same reasons it is useful to any visitor, but there can also be an added enjoyment in virtually exploring somewhere connected to a film or television production before making the physical trip. They may want to follow the route towards a location, recognise parts of the landscape or find somewhere they have seen on screen or in behind-the-scenes material, making that virtual exploration part of the research rather than just a practical check.

Street View can become part of word of mouth

Not everybody exploring a screen location on Street View is about to book a trip, and nor do they need to be for that interaction to have value. Someone may not currently be able to afford the journey but can still explore the location virtually, while fans can send Google Maps locations and Street View imagery to friends or share them within fandom communities, helping other people discover and explore the location for themselves. In that sense, Street View can become part of the word of mouth around a screen location long before some of those people ever visit.

The popularity of GeoGuessr is also a useful reminder that people enjoy exploring Street View imagery for its own sake and that this behaviour has been gamified. JetBlue took that idea directly into destination marketing in 2025 with a GeoGuessr campaign built around identifying ten destinations from street-level imagery.

Start with an audit

Before investing in new Street View capture, start by auditing what visitors can already see. Look at the locations you actively promote, whether the existing imagery is still useful and accurate, and where Street View coverage ends before getting to the destination. For screen tourism, add another filter by checking whether filming locations and details that may now matter to fans are captured – remember though this is not a promotional video – particularly where a production is creating new interest in places that previously received little attention.

An audit may also reveal that existing coverage was captured in conditions that make an important location difficult to see or appreciate. Commissioning new capture gives destinations some ability to plan around suitable weather conditions and seasonality, although Street View capture should remain a useful representation of the visitor experience rather than a promotional shoot.

Then put boots on the ground at the priority locations. Cross-reference what visitors see through Google Maps and Street View with what is actually there, and experience any important routes or trails where coverage is missing. The aim is not to capture everything, but to establish where better Street View coverage would genuinely help visitors understand, explore or plan a journey, and whether that value justifies the investment. Remember too that adding Street View imagery does not automatically change Google’s A-to-B routing, which needs to be considered separately.