One of the industries that is clearly benefitting from the Metaverse is the Toursim and Hospitality business. Centered around travel, and providng the ability to have teaser experiences of far off places before travelling, the Metaverse is expected to be a game changer in this industry. As per industry reports, the market is sitting at $200Billion and has the potential to grow at 25% CAGR.
The ability to experience a virtual version of the journey before booking tickets is an excellent strategy for driving sales potential. A single passenger experience involves many experiences such a virtual walk through the natural beauty of what the place has to offer, the points of interests, experiencing the hotels, the airport, the airlines that transport them, trains, city squares, railports etc. provides choices that have never been possible before. This virtual taste before buy is surely set to encourage buying power.
Consider someone planning to visit Dubai. They wear a pair of VR glasses and are transported into a metaverse where they can view the luxuries of the flagship airline, business class lounges, the virtual views of the Burj Khalifa, Burj Dubai, the Palm, theme parks, the magnificient malls, five star hotels, downtown views, the list is endless. The ability to walk thorugh the sandy beaches, or pass through the mall metaverses just enhances the digital experience across retail, enntertainment and leisure.
A very popular Destination and Leisure company claims that they experienced a 200% increases in bookings once they introduced 5 mins VR experiences for top destinations. So it appears that brick and morter travel agents do have a unique product to offer in the VR metaverse, to counter the online booking engines that are a huge threat already for their business.
The Singapore's Millennium hotels and resorts launched what is claimed the first hotel metaverse and we also saw in 2022, the launch of the Bengaluru Metaport which is the world first airport in metaverse.
The metaverse is a cirtical add-on to existing channels in teh roursim industry, and a virtual booking system with a meta human concierge-speaker provides a more convincing and human way to book tours. Travel technology company Amadeus is already investing to provide a potential metaverse and AI led experience for what they have termed as "experientialists" which will provide choices to the customer and enable speed of decison-making, apart from upsellling opportunities for the travel agent delivering this unique experience.
The possibilities of using the Metaverse in toursim industry is significant and imagination is the only limit of how this can be deployed for the benefits of the end consumer and the growth of the travel industry.
