Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Virtual Reality booming as a new way to start your trips


                                                                                            Xiaoqing YU, Cui ZHANG

VR means the experience of being totally immersed in a purely virtual world which could be achieved with the help of headset with built-in contents. It sounds a bit high-tech and expensive but Virtual Reality(VR) and Augmented Reality(AR) may not be so remote to you as you think. To get a vivid VR experience today, you may just need to spend 15 US Dollars to buy a Google CardBoard or simply follow the instructions and use make one using easily access materials yourself. Combine with your smartphones apps, you could watch a VR video or play some simple game with it.
Companies in travel industry are trying to make commercial use to promote their business. Azamara Airline use Azamara 3DI to provide on-board headset for passengers to explore Mediterranean destinations from every angle. Travel agencies brought up “Try before you fly” in select agents in the UK, Germany and Belgium. You can virtually fly over Manhattan before deciding to book a holiday there. South Africa DMO implants VR headsets with built-in contents of authentic travel experience in South Africa in bars in UK.

Marriott launched the first In-Room Virtual Reality Travel Experience called “VRoom Service” in September 2015. Matthew Carroll, vice president, Marriott Hotels giving us the motivation to implement new ICT application for the Marriott hotel in London and New York:“VRoom combines storytelling with technology, two things that are important to next generation travelers." They provide customers with the Gear VR set including Samsung Gear VR headset, a Samsung Galaxy S6 (which acts as the display) and a matching pair of Level On headphones. You could hit the small icons for different destinations such as the Andes mountains in Chile, the crowded streets of Beijing, or ice cream shop in Rwanda.

Although the application of VR are not sufficient and the hardware needs more evolution, the future of VR/AR seems promising. It is estimated that in 2018 EU and US could have 30,000,000 dedicated VR devices and Augmented/Virtual Reality has a market of USD 150 billion till 2020. Samsung, HTC, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Epson, LG are all fighting to launch their VR headset before their competitors. The future for travel is unfolding before eyes through new lens and headset.






The Farm 51 Group S.A., Report on the current state of the VR market, 02, 2016, retrieved from: http://thefarm51.com/ripress/VR_market_report_2015_The_Farm51.pdf 

Instagram Debuts Full-Screen Ads In Stories: an opportunity for the tourism industry?

Instagram is a hot and trendy social media. Created in 2010 it is mainly useful to share pictures and video with your network, but shortly it is also become an efficient tool in the Tourism and Travel industries.
The pros of this free application are that is it downloadable from all the mobile devices and can be translated into several languages. This means that this application can be broadcasted from all around the globe.

Nowadays, the Tourism and Travel industries companies are more and more supporters of the use of Digital Marketing tools which include POEM (Paid Owned Earned) media, such as Instagram. They are powerful means to reach millions people for low cost, and high potential revenues.

Instagram launched its own analytics tool “Insight”, which enable the companies using it to get an overview of what’s really happening on the web. They can get all the impression from their audience and check the number of views on their official website. They can of course still post content (posts, pictures and video) in order to enhance their product.

As this application is pretty young and for free to download, it allows to reach people easily and very fast. Through the participation of all the users, it is a good way to share and broadcast all the information, through all the other social media by the same way.

The participative tourism is a good way for Travel Destination be advertised through the use of hashtag and @ by Instagram followers.
People can see the attraction of the destination if there are lots of contents, if lots of people have been there and raise their awareness by the pictures of what the tourists experienced.

When Instagram launched the stories, it has “become a mainstream expression tool," said James Quarles, the Instagram's VP of business. Indeed, businesses are seeing the stories as a new opportunity to deepen the relationship between a business and a person. For tourism businesses, it is a good way for communicating on their destination and strengthening their brand image.

With the launch of the full-screen ads in people stories, businesses can reach 150 million daily users. The ads in stories can include photos, videos and they are labeled as sponsored. Advertisers and businesses would be able to create videos or slideshows of pictures of maximum 15 seconds that will be seen when Instagram users will watch stories.

According to an Instagram study, one-third of the most-viewed stories are made by businesses and around three-quarters of Instagram users follow a business on the app. By consequence, the ads in stories give a use opportunity for businesses to influence their targets. For the tourism industry, it becomes a new opportunity to communicate on their destination, gives Instagram users the desire to visit those places and make them dream at any time.
The global head of social marketing and content at Airbnb said that “by creating and publishing experience-driven stories, we can truly captivate and reach travelers wishing to book aspirational trips on Airbnb" and mention the fact that Instagram Stories engages their community to be part of an adventure.

Instagram is now experimenting ads with around 30 clients, including General Motors, Nike, Asos, Yoox, Netflix and Airbnb. 


Here is an example of Airbnb ads in a story

 

We can ask Instagram users if the Ads tool damage their experience when watching a story...


By Lauriane Amand & Clémence Duvent


References:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/11/instagram-stories-hits-150m-daily-users-launches-skippable-ads/