Virtual Reality in tourism 

 What if you can test your holiday destination before booking anything?

A tour through NYC without actually being there? It is now possible with the British tour operator Thomas Cook. It uses 360° virtual reality to give client a sample of holiday destination. 

Clients can also virtually explore hotels. The aim is to make people “try” their wishing destination before they book. It becomes easier for them to decide whether they want to buy a package or not. The 360° experience is very close to the reality; no catalog can match this.

Lufthansa is also experimenting the virtual reality. Passengers can now take a virtual seat on board and that is applying also to the food they will recieve on board or even they can discover the sites that are waiting them on their holiday destination.

Digital technologies are changing the way tourists explore cities. With the TimeTraveler App, visitors can discover what the area around used to look like before. To do this, users just direct their phone toward the specific landmarks, the app recognizes them and plays the respective historical background.

Digital innovation such as virtual reality here is not replacing human but is more complementing them, so travelling will become more interactive, personal and efficient. And still, at the end of the day, people will  have to decide for themselves where they want to travel, how they want to travel and what kind of activities they would like to do in their holiday destination.

The impact of Mobile Technology on Tourism

Three basics keys to run a virtual meeting

Nowadays, the race for the one who shows he is the best in technology is everywhere. Even in the event industry, the virtual meeting are going more and more important to show how the organizer is modern and adapted to his world. Moreover, it allows to avoid travel costs. Even in politics, the hologram presented by J.L Melenchon had a great impact in his race for presidency! But now we know it’s a big trend to follow, we should learn what the basics to successfully run a virtual event are. This article give us three basics keys to lead a virtual meeting.

Keep you meeting human

There is nothing worst that talking to people who doesn’t look to listen to you… Whatever the type of event you use, keep it human. If you organize a virtual meeting, turn the video on! As most of the attendees are already separated by phone, don’t put additional distance between them. It’s important to see faces of the people you are talking to, to directly feel their emotions and reactions. Moreover, people don’t have the choice to look at the person who is talking, that automatically push more respect and make people focused on the meeting.

Prepare the meeting even more

Instead of having the person in front of you, in his office, with just the necessary to run the meeting around, you will be in your own environment, with all the things you like around you, all easy-to-catch distractions… That’s why the virtual meeting has to be prepare even more, to keep the attention of your attendees. Send a detailed agenda to the participants few days before the meeting, as they have time to read it, understand what it is about and prepare their interventions. Nobody takes the same time to think about ideas, so if the participants discover the ideas during the meeting, it could happen that after having much time to think about it participants have other ideas and… need another reunion. It is already very hard to have people from different places caught together in the same time once, don’t take the risk to have to do this organization twice.

Make people feel comfortable

Even if it’s a virtual meeting, you don’t have to feel like you have to go right and fast on the goal. Take your time for at least each person to each other’s, make a funny anecdote on everyone to make people comfortable, relaxed and a friendly atmosphere. During the conference, you have to make respected the time to speech of everybody, be sure people don’t interrupt each other’s especially if there is a gap between the time people talks and the time the others hear because of the network. At the beginning of the meeting, establish the communication rules and be sure everybody respect it all time long!

These three keys are really basics but fundamenta to run a virtual meeting. Everybody has to find what is important for him but also for the attendees and make additional but specific “keys” adapted to the topic, the culture and personalities of the participants etc. So now, you don’t have choice to take the plunge! :)

virtual reality in events

Combining with computer technologies with virtual reality headsets provide users with realistic images, sounds and other sensations. It bundles with user’s physical presence in the environment.

Experience is playing important role in the events. Attendees are more interested in new things which are one reason to attract them. Only interesting thing is not enough to meet the demand of attendees. Virtual reality can improve the experience of attendees by provides lively and realistic dramatic images.

As for products, demonstrating is beset by companies that focus on technologies. It is not easy to transport and demonstrate the high technology in event venues and allow attendees to experience the function of it. However, virtual reality can fix this instead of a 2D videos or sounds without sensitive feelings.

As for speakers. Practical activities are one of the main parts of education which boring and cramming teaching can’t bring experiential teach to people. It’s interesting and memorable to people when sense organs feel and attract information from VR.

Since the number of mobile users are increasing and mobile tools has already changed people’s life style. Therefore, as for participants, it’s worth remembering that almost every mobile user can obtain amazing experience. As for event planners, it’s capable to show their service and increase their brand in event markeing.

YuQi & Estelle

https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/what-is-virtual-reality.html

http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/virtual-reality-trends-events

http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/virtual-reality-in-events/

The Future Trends of Event Apps

Amelie ROUX / Eloise CAMELIO

Article: The Future Trends of Event Apps Corbin Ball, a speaker and independent third-party consultant focusing on meetings technology

For most people today, including the less concerned by technology, to have a Smartphone and use it during events become usual. Thus, mobile event app developers are growing and rethinking about the options around it.

The October 2014 MPI/Double Dutch surveys has showed that 85% of event stakeholders are concerned about using mobile applications for their meeting or conference. Although, it appears that what is the most useful is what replace paper and make the organization of the event simpler. It also gives a green dimension to events and it’s becoming more and more important.

Further than it, those developments, apps gives so many analytics details and provide more involvement from the participant side as well.

Before this technology, planners were using computers before the event and after. Actually it was difficult to use it during the event. The real difference is that nowadays, it’s about real time information to create a true experience. Everything through the app is trackable.

There are plenty of questions that could easily find quick respond:

-       Who is the current speaker?

-       What speaker was the most liked by the audience?

-       For what and at what moment, people used the app?

Data collected during even will be used next time to improve the experience. Those new capabilities definitely appear as a powerful asset to work on.  The benefits made by event in apps are huge.

BLE (Bluetooh Low Energy) and Beacon are future tools to simplify event organization. That’s why app developers work hard to develop and integrate these technologies with mobile devices. Beacons allow to integrate and to pass messages on smartphones via a Bluetooth connection, they are radio transmitters to share information on mobile apps.

We will develop below some examples of ways to integrate them in event organization:

-       “Gamification and scavenger hunts”: Beacon can help attendees to discover the site of the event and all spaces associated.

-       “Location information and navigation assistance”: Beacon permit to attendees to geolocate their position to guide themselves during an event.

-       “Personalized service: Data collected by Beacons permit to know for example when an attendee arrival to an event to synchronize his arrival and sent him information about the event schedule.

-       Exchange of information: With the authorization of the user the mobile app can share information like social network profile and he can know information about another user close to him. 

-       Measurement of time pass on something: Bean can measure the time pass on a stand or a conference, it permits to give information on exhibitor.

-       “Automated demonstrations”: Beacons can trigger content at distance like video or message in a conference for example.

-       ““Attendees action metrics”: Allow to track attendees and communication and interact with them to collect their comments during an event.

All these different examples highlight the strength of Beacons for event organizers and the fact that is essential for them to consider these new technologies that represent a relevant added value. However, it’ s necessary to pay attention to their use to attendees don’t feel too track in their private life by the collection of their private data. It must be controlled to stay efficient.