Although the views from these 9 Panos is quite amazing in itself, the main action happens BEHIND the "Hanging Gardens" with 7 Levels of Shops etc.

But firstly to give an idea of size here is a comparison to the Sydney Cricket Ground at the same scale.

For Jewel on a given floor there are about 120 Panos (for the outer rings) arranged around a circle (or in fact an oval) so that works perfectly as a clock with "Entry Point" Panos at each HOUR. Here is a screenie of Level 5 which you will see if you select "VIEW L5" in the Top Frame (once you open the Web-App).

For example if you select 6 o'clock you will get a Pano like this

and by clicking the right arrow about 10 times (not here - on the Web-App) you will see 10 more Panos from 6 o'clock to 5 o'clock. So that's the way to go - there are 12 of these o'clock Entry Points on 7 Levels to allow you to get to know all about Jewel the BUILDING.

You will also notice that this particular Google Trekker exercise has been configured with "Levels" so there is a series of tabs on the right that allow you to select the 7 different levels. This works WITH the tabs of this Web-App. For example to continue as above, having selected 6 o'clock on Level 5 as an Entry Point you can then go to the 6 o'clock position on any other level and continue your Virtual Tour.

So having done that "Panorama Viewing Helper" exercise I might have simply left it there (and still MIGHT) but it sort of bugged me that covid had had a high attrition rate on the individual shops so these 2019 Panos do not always reflect the current situation (2022 at present).

In fact I have made a "cut-down" version Jewel Stage1 which does just that, particularly as some potential "interested parties" may just want the "wow factor" and not the details.

But for the full version you will know that all around the world the Google Car is regularly doing updates on Street View Panos but that is not normally the case for Street View via Trekker.

So my solution (as a Google Trusted Pro Photographer) was to bite the bullet and do a "DIY Trekker" exercise of a Pano outside each shop in 2022 (and updated when a shop changes hands, which should be far less frequent now after the worst of covid). There would then be a "front page" for each shop that allows INSIDE connection (as well as other information such as Website, Google Business Site etc link for the shop).

The inside connection feature is most important because of the possibilities shown in this video.

This ("Green Tick") operation is what I refer to here as DIY Trekker and came about because recent technology advances mean that tiny camera you see can do the same job for a Street View Panorama as the 26 kg backpack camera called Trekker (and no need to wait on the list to BORROW Trekker or be excluded for not being an organisation). AND this is already happening for Jewel for about 20 (and increasing) of the shops as I explain below using the example of Sankranti restaurant.

Phase 1 of this plan was to start on the Food Hall of Basement Level 2 and the photography was done in June 2022 (29 shops). Now in August 2022 the associated Web-App has been completed to the point of asking the individual shops if they want to be part of the exercise by "Claiming the Site".

To see all of this "In Construction" see The Food Hall which starts with a Virtual Tour on a path that zig-zags through the maze of shops. Then please Select Auntie Anne's (under the Red Dot at the end of the Virtual Tour) to see an example of a completed Site. All the rest (eg Select Tokyo Milk under the Red Dot) simply invite the Owner to "Claim this Site".

Phase 2 is the WHOLE Jewel Complex (including the Food Hall) and this Phase was awaiting photography starting in October 2022.

UPDATE September 2022 - Alas, rather dramatic personal reasons have cancelled out my October 2022 photography window and it looks at this stage that my next window might be in the first half of 2023.

In reality this is far too big a project for one person operating remotely from Singapore and it would be far better to have a "partner" such as The Red Marker who you will meet below who is also a Google Trusted Pro (Green Tick) Photographer, or a backer such as Yotel or HSBC who have a commercial interest in Jewel already. Then there might be Glencore who are using Jewel in their advertisements.

So with the prospect of approaching such people (or they contacting me) I will first explain the roll-out plan as I see it. First of all I will explain that to avoid congestion each Level is divided up into four (compas based) Segments as shown below.

Some Levels (because of the train etc) do not have all four Segments but the full "blueprint" will be evident once you explore the shops on the various Levels. Here is the SW Segment of Level 3 and there are 20 more Segments similar to this.

As you will see the Shop Names that my laborious research says should be there in 2022 are "penciled in" to be confirmed by the new round of DIY Trekker Photography which has just been postponed. Until that time these orange tabs are not "mapped" which is to say if you click on them nothing happens below.

But to give an example of one Segment that has been taken to the next phase here is the SE Segment of Level 3.

To see all this in action here is a shortcut to Level 3 Shops, so open that in a new tab.

As partially explained above, Select the left Tab for SW Segment and below you will see 11 Shops with O'Coffee Club at the top but as for 20 other similar Segments nothing happens below if you select a Shop.

Now Select the right Tab for SE Segment and below you will see 11 Shops with Monster Planet at the top. Select Monster Planet and below you will see an image from the 2019 Pano for "Suage Hokkiado Soup Curry" as it is one of the 6 (of 11) Shop Sites that have changed ownership in this Segment. The words "UPDATED IMAGE REQUIRTED" confirm the ongoing action plan and below it spells out the method for the owner to "Claim the Site".

Then I have initially marked Sankranti in GREEN so it stands out as an example of a Claimed Site and you can view all the details where the final Tab is "Pano below" and we see not just a single Pano but the start of a Virtual Tour of some 7 Panos joined by Arrows. So it seems in April 2019 Sankranti hired a "Green Tick Man" known as The Red Marker to make this Virtual Tour (and upload it to Google Maps). The site is provisional as I have yet to speak to Sankranti and The Red Marker about this.

It is all very well to have brilliant technology and pretty pictures but the bottom line will always be "does it IMPROVE the bottom line?" The punch-line for the "Green Tick" video above is so quick and small it is easy to miss, but it is

But of course the business owner wants to go beyond "impact" to the bottom line of "dollars", so I will attempt to quantify some of those questions.

I will first answer the question of the Pano Helper being useful to the tourist and in this case I was the tourist for my one day in Singapore. I had 6 hours to kill before Yotel would allow me to check in so I started with my "work" of 9 Panos around the Vortex on Level 1 and then 30 for my Virtual Tour of the Food Hall. Then it was PLAY Time and although there are impressive directories on all floors you can't take them with you so I was like a kid in a toyshop following the arrows on my OWN Web-App going around and around and up and down exploring the whole of Jewel. So while this was a bit like marking my own exam paper I can't see how others would not think similarly.

Come the evening, as a curry fanatic and ex-pat resident of Singapore in the 1980s there was no doubt I was going to eat at Sankranti and was glad they had used The Red Marker for a Virtual Tour to include in my Web-App, meaning that I had all the tools I needed from the Google Business site to tell me when it was least crowded and the website to see the menu, right down to using the Virtual Tour to select the best seat - and the meal was just as I remembered from 35 years ago with Singapore still making traditional curries rather than downgrading for convenience reasons to tasteless "Indian stir-fry" as for Australia and the UK.

For Sankranti, their investment in the Virtual Tour means that it is on Google Maps and Street View and also automatically goes to their Google Business Site under "Photos". Then they have featured it at their own Website and finally I do the same at this Web-App. So the Google System says "all roads lead to Rome - the more the merrier" and Google tells us that from all that there have been 75,000 Views of the Panos over 3 years. Only Google would know how Views:Customers might work and they are not about to tell anybody.

However we CAN do some scenarios to "get a handle" on the figures starting with the only certainty which is at least one Viewer (myself) was attracted to the Panos and actually ate there. Now if we look at just 1% doing similarly then 750 Viewers also ate there and even if they spent just $1 (which is impossible) it would pay for the Virtual Tour. So in my estimation I would think the Virtual Tour payed for itself many times over.

For The Red Marker and other Green Tick people (including myself) the Web-App provides a central SHOWCASE of their work as a convenient way of attracting more customers.

For Jewel itself prosperous Shops means the all important occupancy rate is kept as high as possible so overall it seems like a win-win situation.

Now as you can see projects such as this start purely as a hobby for me and most remain so as I move on to a NEW hobby, meaning I would not normally be looking at Views etc. But having done so for this summary I would like to report some interesting facts that stand out from the rest for no apparent reason.

The first one is that the Pano in the Food Court outside Tokyo Milk Factory has "gone viral" and in just 3 months has 120,000 Views which is more than half of the 200,000 Views for the 50 Panos I took on that day in June 2022. And that was without the Pano having the Tokyo location tag, meaning it did not go to their Google Business Site. It would be nice to get some feedback from them about all these matters.

And finally there is the case of Yotel which has an almost identical precedent at a Greek Hotel. The circumstances are that I stayed at the Hotels on a trip and when I tried to book again for another trip I found the price had more than doubled.

The first similarity is that Google had incorrect locations on Google Maps meaning people (like myself) could not use the "Directions" function to find the Hotels. In both cases (in my Google Local Guide capacity) I suggested an "Edit" to Google, they approved it, thanked me and email me every time the number of people Viewing the Edit increases by 50,000. Yes I too was amazed at the figures and I will expand on this below.

Secondly I stayed at both Hotels and, as per my normal practice, made a (free) Virtual Tour and a Web-App for the purpose of a "bargaining tool" should I want to stay on a future visit.

Thirdly when I started to check out my prospects for such future visits I found that the "asking price" (for similar time periods etc) had more than doubled in both cases while similar Hotels remained stable.

Fourthly when I investigated I found that both Hotels had a particularly "enticing" Panorama of a view that was previously "invisible" to the tourist market, and that these Panos had a high View rate.

Here is the Web-App for Yotel and the Pano in question is the default Pano in the lower frame. For a Digital Nomad (as I and a lot of people are) it could be described as one of a kind with wifi, power/USB outlets, free coffee and not only an amazing view over the Vortex but also the soothing waterfall sounds. The importance of KNOWING about it is that it is in stark contrast to the rooms (called cabins) which are tiny and windowless.

The Views for these 2 Panos looking out over the Vortex are about 8,000 after 3 months so in my logical analysis the "supply and demand" factors could well have been altered to the extent of a 100% increase in room rate, but I would love to hear from anybody who might be able to shed more light on the situation.

If I am right by default or Yotel confirm that to be true then we certainly have some evidence that "it DOES work", especially if the Greek investigation also proves to be true. The profit increase (for WHATEVER reason) is not chicken feed and if we do some simple calcs based on just 50% occupancy rate it is more than 3 million dollars per annum and while I hasten to add that I am not looking for any reward, even if my involvement only helped by 1%, that is $30,000.

To now return to the matter of the Position Edit of Yotel, here is an image Google sent me recently about an Edit/Addition I made for Pyrford Lock which is a most iconic lock on the River Wey (off the River Thames) in the UK beside a most iconic Pub.

So in 4 years there have been 450,000 Views of a feature Goggle had originally not included. But if we swing the Pano back to the left to the iconic Pub we are reminded of a recently introduced Google feature in Street View where the Pub suddenly appears on the Pano with a link to the Google Business Site.

Then if we go back to Singapore and, for example, go to Serangoon Rd we see the same

Now if this worked for Jewel there would be no need for me to do the "Shops" exercise at all. However my understanding (subject to more research) is that this new feature is a product of a new camera introduced to Google Cars only in about 2021 and probably not available in the forseeable future to "Trekker Style" locations such as Jewel.

However anyone who tries to second guess what Google can or might do is a fool and the footprint of the 2019 Trekkers does not look like a backpack Trekker but a Trekker on one of the many vehicles, boats, trains and gondolas etc that Google keeps trotting out, so the new car camera might well happen on a "trike" or whatever that could easily hike around Jewel.

But then AGAIN, please watch this video

for which the punch-line is

The clear message is if "others" can do the work FOR Google at no cost TO Google then they will gladly jump at it. My system as proposed here does everything Google wants, which is to take the Viewer to the Google Business Site of each Shop, so why would they want to get involved when they have 200 billion other Panos to update around the world? - so "watch this space!"

So on 15th September 2022 just as I would have been boarding the plane for Greece and Singapore save for my current disaster, I will leave this Web-App in this format so that those who may be interested in networking can read about how it got to here and where it might go in the future, and hopefully continue on early in 2023.

And I have just added the "cut-down" version Jewel Stage1 as detailed above.

You can contact me at info@camosdigitalnomadservices.com