Virtual reality offers ‘test drive’ of travel destinations

Several companies have used 360-degree videos to entice travellers in the digital age

From raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to rolling out an airline’s new businessclass service, travel companies and tourism boards are increasingly turning to virtual reality to expand their reach and entice prospective clients.

In November, the Tourism Authority of Thailand released four 360degree videos, including one on an elephant sanctuary near Chiang Mai and another on the Khao Luang Cave in western Thailand.

“With social media and distribution channels so fragmented, we have to appeal to the senses of con- sumers,” said Steven Johnson Stevenson, the authority’s marketing manager for the Eastern United States. “We want them to be able to touch, feel, see and hopefully one day smell Thailand.”

Virtual reality, he added, “allows consumers to interact with us in a way they never have before.”

Cathy Tull, senior vice-president of marketing for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said virtual reality lets consumers “test drive” a destination. The most popular of the 360-degree videos that the Las Vegas authority has released since March is an actual drive down Las Vegas Blvd.

In January 2016, Tourism Australia introduced a series of 360-degree films depicting aquatic and coastal travel experiences there, including snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef and watching the sun set over Syd-

“You can’t just have an ad . . . You have to have an experience.” HENRY HARTEVELDT TRAVEL ANALYST, ATMOSPHERE RESEARCH

ney Harbour.

“We need to be able to tell the story of Australia in new and engaging ways,” said Lisa Ronson, the group’s chief marketing officer.

Then there is the desire of some companies to appear cutting-edge.

Maria Walter, managing director of product development and brand strategy for United Airlines, said one reason it had opted to use virtual reality to begin promoting its new Polaris business-class service last summer was that the technology could help the carrier re-establish itself as an innovator. More than 10,000 people — members of the general public and travel trade, as well as United employees — watched a 360-degree virtual-reality demonstration of Polaris at road shows in the carrier’s domestic hub cities last year.

Many who watched the demonstration last year were using virtual reality for the first time, Walter said.

“It definitely got their attention in a way a brochure would not,” she said.

Henry Harteveldt, travel analyst for Atmosphere Research, suggested that premium travel brands, as well as destinations trying to reposition themselves or reach a new group of consumers, were turning to virtual reality because it provided “authentic, breakthrough creative content.”

“You can’t just have an ad,” he said. “You have to have an experience.”

One of the earliest adopters of vir- tual reality was Marriott Hotels, which in 2014 introduced “teleporter” booths that it took to hotels around the United States, letting guests experience a black-sand beach in Maui and the view from the top of Tower 42 in London while wearing an Oculus Rift headset.

Other hotel companies — including St Giles Hotels, a London-based company that has nine hotels worldwide, and Best Western — have followed suit. The St Giles videos, which feature activities at destinations where it has hotels, were made by guests who won a contest, and by social media influencers it selected.

Virtual reality, said Tammy Lucas, vice-president of marketing for Best Western, “fits so perfectly into the hotel space. People really want to know what they’re going to get. It offers them an opportunity to set their expectations.”