If you are in Pompeii, one of the most beautiful thing you can do is the Flashback Journey to Pompeii,a virtual reality tour in the Pompeii of the past!
In this article, we have a simil-interview to Jason Schuman, the inventor and businessman that can permit this beautiful journey in the past.
Having been in the sightseeing business for 23 years in his native New York, (his business Romancing Manhattan Tours is one of the Big Apple’s favorite private tour companies), Jason Schuman had very high hopes of his first visit to one of the world’s most iconic sights – Pompeii.
He had taken his family there in May 2014, a first time visit to Italy, and although they were enraptured by one of the most famous archaeological sites in Italy, Jason was left distinctly unimpressed. “The tour left me wanting more,” he explains. “The guides were experts, but they hardly used any visual aids whatsoever. They kept saying ‘Try to imagine…’ but I didn’t want to imagine, I wanted to see! The guide was using a flip book, but with 30 people we couldn’t see it. And afterwards my dad was driving us all crazy trying to get a copy of this book and the DVD that went with it!”
But, as is often the way, this disappointment became the catalyst for Jason’s innovative new business idea and was the reason why he is now in Pompeii running his new company Flashback Journey to Pompeii.
Before his Italian holiday, Jason had been thinking of new ways to attract investors to his New York tour business. He came up with the idea of a 3D virtual reality headset which would add photos, movies and music to the real life experience. Then the people on the tour could see the landmark they were looking at in different eras, using the headset to compare how it looks now with how it was in the past. He had already begun researching the technology, which at the time didn’t actually exist, determined to find a way to create the idea he had in his mind. The project is currently in its final stages of development.
When they got back from the tour, Jason stood on the balcony of his rented villa in Italy, buzzing with the sheer excitement of it all. “I need to do what I want to do in New York with Pompeii,” he told his stunned family. “They all looked at me like I was absolutely nuts,” he adds with a laugh.
He began making calls and he had a sleepless night researching just how he could make his idea of a “kind of reconstruction of Pompeii” work.
Two months later, Jason was back in Italy. For two weeks he went to Pompeii every single day, getting to know it as well as the regular tour guides, working out the most interesting parts, the best angles, the key features. He knew that most people on a tour have limited time and so often miss the best bits. That wasn’t going to happen on his tour.
More trips followed later in the year. This time to make contacts with car services, hotels, cruise liners and travel agencies. As a lifelong student of people and a charismatic and empathetic person himself, Jason was deeply conscious of not coming across as “a cocky American who doesn’t speak the language,” and took great pains to always be polite and apologetic that he wasn’t yet fluent in Italian.
Jason was also heavily engaged in researching the technology. In January 2015, he attended the Consumer Electronic Symposium in Las Vegas, a trade show which specializes in breakthrough technologies and he picked up a lot of information and ideas.
Jason was sure that he wanted his ‘back in time’ concept to be fully immersive, not just slightly augmented reality. He made his headset selection and his final prototype “really blew people away.”
In the meantime, Jason realized he needed help in setting up a company in Italy. He contacted Ben and Ronnie from Business e via Italy (BEV) who loved the concept and immediately swung into action. They handled everything from hooking Jason up with Darius, a helpful archaeologist to setting up the company, finding him an apartment and renting and staffing the office premises. To his amazement they found him a building which was opposite a 9/11 memorial flying the US flag, something hugely significant to a New Yorker who had lived through those terrible days. “I was really glad I had these guys. I knew absolutely no-one in Italy. Setting up a business here is very different from setting one up in New York. There, you just go down to the County Clerk’s Office and an hour later you have a business!”
A month before the company was to launch Jason learned that a compulsory software update was unexpectedly required in order to use the headsets he had bought. After a frustratingly long wait for more information, he discovered that it could take weeks or even months to get the update.
The only way round this delay was to work out how to do the update himself. It was perfectly legal to do this, but Jason was a tour guide, not a techie. Get it wrong and thousands of dollars’ worth of headsets would have to be scrapped. However, it was now mid July, he was stressed out and “bleeding money”. He needed a little miracle and a little miracle is what he got.
He recalls the morning well, because he was listening to Ave Maria in the car having just resolved that this was the day he was going to try and update the headsets himself, using the knowledge he had gained online. Taking the elevator to his office, he heard Ave Maria playing again, something that struck him as odd, because he had never heard music in that elevator before. He checked his phone in case it was coming from there, but the phone was switched off. What is stranger still is that afterwards he checked with the people who built the elevator and they told him it wasn’t equipped to play music.
Taking this as a good omen, Jason worked on the update that morning and, with his heart in his mouth, tested it out. To his amazement, it worked! He checked with several headset tech experts and they told him what he had done was absolutely correct and just how they would have done it.
The business was now all systems go. Jason knew it was late in the season, but his website was up and running and he had already got a tremendous amount of interest from tour guides, cruise ships and tour operators, who loved the idea of an immersive 3D 360-degree experience with headsets that also provided historical commentary in six languages along with the visual experience.
Through chatting to the archaeologists and tour guides that Jason decided the best way to incorporate the 3D Virtual Reality experience into the existing tours was to provide each group with a Tour Assistant. “We are not looking to replace the tour guides,” he explains. “These guides are great, the real deal, highly qualified experts in European history and archaeology. They’re top notch. What the headsets do is enhance the experience for the guide and the tour group, so they don’t need to say ‘Try to imagine,’ any more, they can show them.”
Jason and his company Flashback Journey to Pompeii are now in the middle of their 3rd season. He is keen to extend the experience to kids, to help bring history to life and sees his work in Pompeii as just the beginning. He is a passionate advocate for the company, motivated not by financial success, but by providing people with a great customer experience. “You should see the expressions on people’s faces when they use the headsets!” he says. That, to him, is worth more than anything.
From Flashback Journey to Pompeii founder Jason Schuman:
“Yes… it all started with a family trip to Italy in May of 2014. After a first-time visit to Pompeii I knew immediately that visitors needed something more. There is a phrase in Pompeii that you hear quite frequently from tour guides. This phrase was one that – for Pompeii – is absolutely essential. Until now.The phrase echoed in my mind for many weeks. I knew that things were about to change. And in a big way. That phrase is this: Try To Imagine…
Try to imagine what these ancient ruins must have looked like 2,000 years ago before the eruption of Vesuvius. Try to imagine the people walking the streets going about their business: shopping in the Forum, having a drink with a friend at a local tavern, worshiping at the temples, relaxing in the garden of their beautiful homes, watching the gladiators fight to their death at the Amphitheater. Try to imagine the devastation of Mount Vesuvius as the city became buried underneath 30 feet of ash. Forgotten. For hundreds and hundreds of years.
Well… you no longer need to imagine any of these things when you take this journey through time with us. I have created Flashback Journey to Pompeii to take you on an extraordinary adventure where the past comes to life right before your eyes. Historical re-creations of everyday life will allow you to experience ancient Pompeii as it once was, before it was destroyed in 79 AD by the fury of Mount Vesuvius. A truly immersive stereoscopic 3D display that you wear comfortably on your head provides you with an audio/visual immersion at key points of interest throughout your tour. We have created carefully researched audio commentary – available in 6 languages – to accompany the beautiful imagery you will see.
Now I invite you right here, before you even get to Pompeii, to imagine with me a new kind of sightseeing tour experience. The first-ever on-site tour with a 3D Virtual Reality historical re-creation of an ancient city!
But wait… there is more.
I have always loved technology and the ways it can bring us all together. But you have to admit sometimes it feels that as a people we are becoming more and more isolated from each other. And this is why I have decided to do something very important with our tours. In addition to the technology you will have a live tour guide with you the whole time. Yes, an actual physical human being. Someone who is as passionate as I am in bringing the history of Pompeii to life for you.
These hardworking, dedicated and passionate individuals are experts in archaeology and history. This is what they do, this is what they love. And they are there for you to answer questions and further your experience of Pompeii. You will walk the ancient streets in small groups of no more than 12 people. This allows for a more personal and interactive experience.
So I would like to officially invite you, right now, to join us in Pompeii and discover the secrets that lay hidden for almost 2,000 years. It will be a journey you will never forget.
See you in Pompeii!”
Flashback Journey to Pompeii
Tel: +39 081 1877 7006
jason.s@journeytopompeiitours.com
To reach Pompeii, you can choose our transfer service, or, if you want a special tour, you can take a look to ours tours in Pompei (even with private guide)!
For info on our tours, or for a quote for a transfer service, you can contact us with the form in the right of this page, compiling the form in the contact us page, or chatting with us on WhatsApp!
Italian businessman, operating in the tourism sector in Sorrento form more than 15 years, owner of Di Nocera Service and Sorrento Luggage.
Passionate about soccer and sailing, he loves to go around the Amalfi Coast by his motorbike.
He also writes articles about news, tips and tour ideas on this blog!
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