SKEMA Digital Marketing in Tourism and Events: Virtual Tourism

-- Without ticket and suitcase, you can still travel the world.

High-quality multimedia and rich content have permeated every aspects of modern life. Tourism also benefit from the significant innovation of technology in improving the tourists’ sensory experience. Virtual tourism is one of the new form thanks to the wide use of internet and advance technology.

Virtual tourism, the activity that tourists visit one attraction without actually physically being in the scene. The form of virtual tourism changed from presenting tourists with a slideshow or video in the earlier times to photo-based revival of the scene for tourists of today.

In earlier times, virtual tourism was more frequently used by museums. Museums offered a slideshow or video, however within a limited area. The 3D graphical interface were offered by some museums which allowed one to explore the attraction using simple directional camera controls.

Today, the forms of virtual tourism are becoming not only various, but also interactive and customer initiative. At home or in many other places, one can take a virtual tour with the desktop, in a cabin space, or with equipment such as helmet. One can control his own journey. In addition, some apps are also designed for tourists to share experience with others. With the modes of video, or photos, users can share their travel journey with their own voice telling a story or describe in words.

The Advantages of Virtual tourism

To know the sight in advance. Virtual tourism provides visitors an idea about the destination. With the preview, visitors know what to expect about the destination or whether the place is worthwhile to pay actual visit.
Available to those who are inconvenient to travel. People who are disabled, limited by finance, work, or other issues, can use virtual visit to compensate for their regrets.
Rebuild historical landscape or the places that hard to visit. Some historical landscapes were once existing but vanished for some reasons. With advanced technology, these landscapes can be recreated in the form of picture, 3D graph, and even interactive video. It is the same with the places that hard to visit. Places like the Himalaya, South Pole, even outer space can form to virtual tourism, becoming available to the public.

Recent news, a revival of photo-based virtual tourism raised much interest. Jointly sponsored by NASA, Carnegie Mellon University, Google and National Geographic Society, the GigaPan Project hosts extremely high resolution panoramic photos (a gigapixel-resolution) online. The high resolution offers incredibly detailed images that people are able to zoom in on and pan across at will.

With help of new technologies like Google Street View and Web 2.0, virtual tourism is gradually improved. Google Street View allows users to view the city on the web from a pedestrian standpoint. Some cities are offering videos of the city to uses as well. Being “invited” to the street, users can enjoy short videos about some special places, such as scenic spots, historical buildings, and museums. Collaborating with YouTube, Google introduced the technique of embedding video on google map service. Users can easily access to video that hosted on YouTube and embed them on google map. This attractive and interactive technique can be the trend that leads to a new breed of virtual tourism. Along this trend, virtual travelers and enthusiasts can looking forward even to more exciting travel experiences without tickets and suitcase.