Virtual tours aren’t just a nice, high-tech bonus to real estate listings anymore. More and more experts across different industries are using virtual tours to help them get more business. The travel and hospitality industries rely heavily on visual marketing. From hotels and vacation rentals to popular travel destinations, consumers want as much information as possible upfront before making their reservations or booking their trips. Virtual tours help them experience the destination in a way that they can’t through video tours and still images alone.
Whether you’re a hotelier, travel agent, vacation rental owner, tour guide, or a luxury travel advisor, you can use virtual tours to give your clients the high-tech information that they need. Here are four ways the travel industry is implementing virtual tours (and other high-tech virtual experiences) into your travel/hospitality marketing strategy:
Vacation Rentals
Vacation rentals are quickly becoming the new way to travel; a more private and personal option to experience a new city like a local. Vacation rentals range from small rural lofts to homes in quiet suburbs, large apartments in big cities, and sprawling waterfront estates on the ocean. Virtual tours help answer many of the questions that travelers have about a vacation rental property and allow them to become completely immersed in the experience. Through this innovative technology, travelers can move through a vacation property that is thousands of miles away and get an idea for how each room transitions into the next.
This technology allows them to get the feel for the property, understand the layout, and make a confident and informed decision about their travel plans.
Hotel Rooms
Whether you’re running a quiet bungalow in a small town or a five-star resort in a big city, you can use virtual tours to give potential guests an in-depth look into their hotel room options. If you offer rooms of different sizes and with different amenities, a virtual tour can help potential guests understand the difference between rooms and explore their options in a brand new way. It can be hard to tell the size and layout of a hotel room from still pictures alone, and a virtual tour helps travelers feel like they are in the room.
Virtual tours also help ease the uncertainty of booking a hotel room sight-unseen. Knowing what to expect can help anxious travelers and help get their trip off to a more positive and stress-free start. 2D and 3D floorplans are another great way to help travelers get a clear understanding of how they can more effectively move throughout the space.
Resorts
Resorts with luxury amenities like pools, restaurants, arcades, fitness centers, guest spaces, offices, and spas bring in millions of dollars each year. To attract high-end clientele, resorts need to use high-end marketing strategies. Virtual tours allow potential guests to explore the resort virtually, checking on small details that will make a difference in their experience. Virtual tours can be broken up in phases, allowing travelers to experience the parts of the resort that matter the most to them and skip the parts that don’t. This is just another way resorts can predict the needs and wants of their guests and address them proactively.
Private Tours
Along with vacation and travel accommodations, virtual tours can also be used to explain private tours, excursions, and experiences that travelers can add to their vacation experience. This immersive tool allows travelers to catch a glimpse of what they will experience on their excursion, and get them excited about it. It can also help reduce fear and anxiety for people who want to sign up for a tour, excursion, or expedition but aren’t sure what to expect. Again, providing this virtual immersion answers common travel questions before they are even asked.
Websites with virtual tours see more traffic than those that don’t, and that positively impacts your SEO and ranking in Google search results. Virtual tours can also be shared, making it easier to quickly share with a wider audience.
The Takeaway
Any industry that involves presenting a property or experience in an immersive and innovative way can benefit from virtual tours. Giving the consumer all of the information they need in a high-tech way is what sets you apart from the competition. Want to learn more about how to incorporate virtual tours into your travel and hospitality marketing campaigns? Contact us today!
Tags
#Travel #VirtualTours #VirtualTravelTours #Hospitality #HospitalityTours #2DFloorPlans #3DFloorPlans #Innovation #VirtualMarketing
