Attracting customers is always tricky business. Potential guests can read reviews upon online reviews to pick and choose the hotel that appeals to their taste. Once within the hotel, guests only want the crème de la crème to satiate their desires. Now with VR you can knock two birds with one stone - engaging with customers even before they make the leap and giving them a new way to experience travel.

Connect with Customers

The way hotels reel in guests is old - ancient even - you throw a few ads out there and cross your fingers hoping that you don’t have a negative review on TripAdvisor. While ads can help put your brand into the customer’s mind, it’s the second step that cements their decision. Customers want assurance that the experience waiting for them is as advertised and not an unpleasant surprise. So, why not give them a preview of what awaits them.

Have your guests take a stroll along your magnificent lobby, see the evening sky by the pool and even see what the insides of their rooms look like. You are now at the last step of your customer’s decision making process, give them the means to experience your establishment as though they are there in person.

Hotels like Shangri-La and Atlantis have already taken to VR technology to bridge the gap between themselves and their potential guests. An article from JLL real views^[1] says that Raddisson Hotels reported a 135% increase in online revenue on properties offering a virtual tour. The current buzz around VR can help propagate your content across social media and give you the exposure you deserve.

It doesn’t have to stop there, Hotels could have teleporter pods that potential customers can take a step into and see how their next destination looks like. Marriot Hotel built a teleporter, using which a person can see, smell, and feel as though they are there in the flesh. As the old saying goes seeing is believing.

Go the Extra Mile

VR doesn’t just help you bring in customers, it also gives your guest a whole new way to experience travelling. Some hotels now offer the VRoom Service, using which your guests can go sightseeing and visit famous tourist spots from the comfort of their own hotel rooms.

Now I know what you are thinking - why would your guests sit indoors when they’ve travelled all this way? Let’s put it this way - you wouldn’t go to a hotel half way around the world to get a massage, but wouldn’t it be nice to get one anyway. Simply put, VR is a glamourous add-on and hotels can entice guests with it.

The plight of the traveler is the inability to visit and see everything the land has to offer due to logistics involved with physical travel. You can now fill in the gaps - give your guests the complete VR experience and allow them to visit places they otherwise were unable to.

VRoom also opens doors of possibilities to the physically challenged enabling them to visit locations previously not possible. This saves them the time and trouble of physically going to a museum, navigating through a bustling crowd to see The Mona Lisa covered by a sea of people. Instead they can have a virtual tour along with a tour guide where they can walk through locations and admire the sights uninterrupted.

Meet the Future of Hospitality

VR technology is by no means new, but thanks to the recent strides in the field by Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Microsoft HoloLens, the inadvertent result is the technology being more feasible. This means we can expect people to have their own VR gear the same way people have their own smart phones. And where consumers go, brands will follow.

Gearing up to cater to VR can give you a new way to communicate with your potential customers, and Hotels that create content for this new medium will stand out from the rest. Virtual Reality can’t replace the taste and smell, yet. But it can make your guests want to experience more.