Currently, there are more and more VR travel companies are offering simple VR tour service, usually in the form of showing some 360 degree videos of the famous landmark destinations with a standard narrative voice. This is a pure video without any interactions, some videos are even shot on a fixed spot, you can only see a 360 degree scene in a given spot, and then change to another spot after a certain period of time. Sometimes, VR videos can also give you a bird view of the tourist spot, which are acually a drone picture. So is this it? Obviously, the answer is no, VR can do more than these. What can be expected in the future in Virtual Reality Travel? Here we can have some predictions.
1. Recovery of history event at the ancient monuments
Now, if you go to any famous ancient remnant of the historic building, you have no idea of the what is looks like in the old days. VR is a good solution to this, imagine you go to visit the Rome Colosseum, what you see is half of the roof has already collapsed. But in the VR world, you can see the restored complete arena, and even a gladiator fighting a brutal beast in the stadium filled with standing people cheering, rocked with applause. Moreover, you might see Caesar is seating besides you, and how he granted the winning warrior with the prizes. Or when you visit the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, you can watch how Quasimodo lives in the tower and was longing for his beloved Esmeralda, and how Esmeralda was executed young. People can have more feelings and knowledges when they visit the attractions, especially for the foreigners, You might know very well about the history of your own country, but you can hardly have exactly knowledge of other countries, and it is interesting experience to get the knowledge at the very place it happens.
2. Showing the different seasonal view
When you visit some nature landscape places of interest, you must be lucky enough to meet a good weather, otherwise, a cloudy day or storm day, may damage the good impression which you got in the TV or videos. Even if you have come to the place at good time, but in different season, the view is differently beautiful, and for most of the tourist, they are not likely to go to the same sight for many times. So it is very valuable to seeing all the beauties of the diverse seasons at one time, and you can admire and compare the difference between the VR and the real world. For example, Nine-village Valley in China, the No.1 nature reserve and national forest park, which looks like a painting from the god with all kinds of colorful lakes, multi-level waterfalls, snow-capped peaks, and vividly dyed woods. If you only go to the valley in one season, you will miss all the astounishing beauties of the 3 other seasons, but with VR, you can easily enjoy them all together and compare the same spot with different climate view. Jiuzhai is located in a very far away mountains, which you will not like long trip to travel there again and again. Now VR can help you go back virtually whenever you feel like to.
3. Visit a spot from a KOL’s perspective
Sometimes, even if you paid a visit to a musume, you have very little knowledge behind so many cultures in the world. There are millions of collections in the British Museum, but you have no idea where they came from, and what is the story and legend attached to them. Now if there is a humous and informative expert KOL who can guide you to see them, you will be feeling like dabbling in fine-wine speculation. This can also applied to many international exhibitions and trade shows, such as CES. There is a very famous KOL Cyberborg Naomi Wu who like to visit technology trade shows in Shenzhen or Shanghai with a 360 degree camera and share it in her personal channel to let the viewers learn what she saw and get the first-hand feeling and talking with her personal style. Image if some celebrities you like can usher you to visit some place and you can hear the personalized narrative of the place, it would be a very pleasant journey compared with the slient and blind visit you do it on your own.
Beside the applications mentioned above, there are more VR can do for the travel industry. Please leave your comment if you have any new ideas.