Virtual reality (VR) is making great leaps in providing businesses with tremendous growth opportunities. There’s lots of strategies to make the most of it in your marketing campaigns.
For the hospitality industry specifically, VR has already proven to make a huge difference in customer experience and brand engagement for hotels and restaurants.
This immersion into an artificial rendering of a real environment is usually brought about by the usage of a headset such as one by Facebook called Oculus Rift or Oculus Go, or others by Samsung, Google’s cardboard and many more. But a VR experience isn’t limited to wearing headsets, for example Facebook has 360 degree video features that you can use to post on social media or your website.
Virtual tours are beginning to become the keystone of all hospitality industry’s see-it-before buying marketing strategy.
This technology allows for 360 degree views of a hotel’s rooms, amenities, features and ambience without having to actually visit the place, from the comfort of your own home.
Here are three ways businesses in the hospitality industry should use virtual reality.
1. Virtual tours as a sales tool
Virtual tours of hotel rooms and hotel’s premises can be the most common application of VR.
In fact VR tours on hotels and hotel booking websites has improved the number of clicks 10 times from potential guests and have reduced wasted in-person viewings by almost 40%.
See the video below to get an experience of how Hotel Atlantis Dubai used virtual reality to give their patrons a taste of their hotel experience.
2. Virtual travel experiences
How about recreating different aspects of a travel experience, right from the flight journey to arrival to stepping down on your favourite beach destination?
Virtual Reality will have your customer’s back if you want to attract tourists to a destination.
Case in point – Mariott hotel’s teleporter campaign did the same. It organised a virtual reality affair for couples who got married at New York City Hall. The VR experience was a virtual honeymoon to Hawaii.
Get inspiration for your own 360 VR video here.
3. Virtual check-ins
Imagine avoiding the hectic rush of front desk or reception completely while checking into a hotel by entering into a VR video booth for guest identification, room upgrades or even early check-in or check-out.
That is the power of virtual reality for check-ins. Even though it is largely still in it’s infancy, a few hotels have launched their own virtual mobile check-in services. For example, one can use Mariott hotels’ mobile app to check into the hotel before arrival and they will also receive a notification when their room is ready. Sound something from the future? Not really far fetched, check it out below:
Virtual reality is changing the way people experience travel by giving them an authentic experience. As with every technology, it is the right time to invest in at its nascent stage and reap the benefits when it matures and you’ve been using it for awhile!
Speak to one of our video strategists about your virtual reality content idea and receive a quote.
