Augmented Reality In Tourism – 5 Reasons To Utilize It To The Fullest During Your Next Journey For An Indelible Travel Experience: Augrealitypedia
Augmented Reality In Tourism (Image Credit: Antonio Thomas)
You must be familiar about the usefulness of Augmented Reality in various sectors like, advertising, education, manufacturing, marketing, sports, retail and healthcare industries. But, due to easy availability of Mobile devices to the masses, utilization of Augmented Reality is also gaining popularity in various activities related to travelling and tourism.
Today, I will explain the integration of Augmented reality (AR) in tourism. And, you will come to know about the role and involvement of this futuristic technology in strengthening the tourism industry.
Ultimately, I will provide you the solid reasons to implement Augmented reality to the fullest during your next holiday trip.
5 Reasons To Utilize Augmented Reality in Tourism For An Indelible Travel Experience:
Well, for a perfect travel experience you need to plan each and every step with a lot of careful thought. And, these steps include your travel booking, hotel accommodation, transportation & navigation during your trip and opting for an experienced guide to make you familiar with culture and history of the place to visit.
Needless to say that such planning activities are very exhausting and often confusing too. Also, a single wrong decision can always spoil your travel experience completely.
Although a lot of online stuff like images, user reviews and feedback are always there to support you in planning your travel in a better way. But, utilizing Augmented Reality converts the tedious and boring planning process into an engaging, interactive and simple activity.
Moreover, along with making your travel plan smoother, integrating Augmented reality (AR) in tourism actually do even a lot more than you can imagine. In fact, it can assist you with all major events during your next holiday trip, like:-
- Hotel and Flight booking
- Interactive Staying at Hotel
- Transportation and Navigation
- Translating Foreign languages and signs
- Interactive Travel Guide
Nevertheless to mention that Augmented reality can really revolutionize the Tourism industry completely. So, let’s proceed further to know the 5 Reasons to utilize Augmented Reality in tourism for an indelible travel experience.
#1. Augmented Booking Experience
If I am not wrong, the first most action you take when planning a trip is to find hotels and flight that meet your needs and also affordable to your pocket. And, your selection would mainly depend on how your friends, colleagues or members from online forums tell their experience stories.
But, Augmented reality has some more innovative solutions for you. Integrating Augmented Reality in tourism provides an opportunity to “have a look before you actually book“.
Utilization of Augmented Reality for booking your favorite hotel
Augmented reality enables you to have a 3D virtual tour of the hotel to be booked on your mobile itself. You can virtually explore each and every room to know all the details like, space, furniture and interior décor within them.
Moreover, you can also visualize other amenities like, swimming pool, spas, gyms and restaurants. Thus, Augmented Reality not only provides an interactive platform to search and book your hotel accommodation rather you can actually feel like physically visiting the hotel.
In other words, Augmented Reality adds a wow factor in the booking process and provides you an indelible user experience. Ultimately, it injects a confidence factor in your decision.
Flight Booking using Augmented Reality
Just like hotels, searching and booking a flight is also a major pain area in your travel plan. But, no problem, Augmented Reality can help you out to find and book the most suitable flight for you.
With the help of Augmented reality technology, you can now take a sneak peek inside the flight before you actually book a seat in the same. Yes, with the help of your mobile device, you can visualize true to scale seats, leg room and even different entertainment options in various booking classes.
And, if you think that all these will not come true in the coming years, you are absolutely wrong. Airbus has already started experimenting with Augmented reality and launched “iflyA380” AR App for iOS.
Similarly, the travel planning App “App in the Air” demonstrates the utilization of Augmented reality with their innovative project “ARvis”. I recommend you to watch the below YouTube video and feel the highly interactive platform of this flight booking App infused with Augmented reality.
Undoubtedly, integration of Augmented Reality in tourism can really disrupt the way we use to search and book our flight and accommodations.
#2. Augmented Reality in Hotel Accommodation
For an incredible tour experience, undoubtedly, you expect a luxurious and affordable accommodation to relax and stay. But, can you tell me one more thing that you always seek for during your hotel stay?
Yes, you always look for some hotel staff well knowledgeable to guide you and tell about the local places to visit. But, nowadays, hotels can integrate Augmented reality in many innovative ways to inform you about local points of interest and landmarks.
One way to utilize Augmented reality during your hotel stay is through the fusion of interactive virtual elements within the hotel room itself. The hub Hotel from Premier Inn in the U.K is one of the best examples to mention here.
The Hub hotel has painted map of nearby area on the walls of their hotel rooms. And, using Augmented reality technology, they have converted these painted walls into interactive walls by embedding additional information into it.
Thus, whenever you need any detailed information about the local points of interest, just point your smartphone camera towards the wall of the hotel room. And, the digital information will pop-out on the screen of your mobile.
Another innovative way is to integrate Augmented reality into the printed brochure and pamphlets of the hotel. Thus, when you scan these printed materials with your mobile device, they literally come to life and show you the additional information about the local places to visit.
#3. Augmented Reality Transportation and Navigation
Well, after a relaxing night stay, it’s time to go out and explore new places. But, how would you commute here, by hiring a Taxi or by using public transport?
I guess, you will always be hesitant to use public transport in a new place. And, the reason behind this are the many questions arising in your mind, like:-
- Which is the best route for my destination?
- What would be the nearest bus stop for my destination?
- How long will it take to reach my destination?
- How to find the correct bus?
But, integrating Augmented reality in tourism can be a reply to all of the above queries. And, a number of transport apps have already started to introduce various user-friendly features using Augmented Reality.
For instance, “Bus Times London“, a travel App from Mapway Limited provides you an option to locate your bus stop using Augmented Reality. With the help of Augmented Reality, the application superimposes a digital path on the live feed of your device camera.
This path consists of a line, starting from your real-time position and a red icon at the end, representing the position of bus stop. And, you can reach the nearest bus stop by just following this digital path.
Moreover, the application updates the line automatically based on your movement. Thus, you need not to do any guess work and will never lose your way towards your destination.
Similarly, another AR App named “Departures Live” (Android/iOS) overlays the various useful information on the live feed of your smartphone camera. This consists of live status about departures, arrival and departure alert and the pedestrian navigation to the nearest bus stop.
Undoubtedly, the fusion of Augmented reality in tourism assists you to find the best suitable transportation along with the Augmented navigation.
#4. Augmented Reality Translation
Definitely, it will be challenging to plan your holiday trip into such a country whose native language you don’t understand. The situation becomes worse, if you find signboards indicating major tourist areas and directions in an unfamiliar language.
But, you will be in real trouble in case the people of that country also don’t understand the language you speak. In such situation, you may need to hire an interpreter to assist you in translating the foreign languages.
But, Augmented reality has some more innovative alternatives for you. Using Augmented Reality, your mobile device can instantly translate the foreign languages and signs into your chosen, native language.
And, for that, you can just point your AR enabled smartphone towards the printed materials like, signboards or menus. Google Translate, a world known translation AR App (Android/iOS) does exactly the same thing.
The below YouTube video, uploaded by Business Insider, demonstrates the utilization of Augmented reality in tourism industry using “Google Translate” AR App.
Thus, with the help of Augmented reality, you can really overcome the language barrier between the two countries. And, this will certainly improve your overall travel experience.
#5. Augmented Reality Tour Guide
During a visit to any new place, you always need a tourist guide to assist you with detailed information about the cultural, religious and historical importance of that place. Thus, hiring a professional tour guide has been always crucial for the full enjoyment of your holiday trip.
But, Augmented reality converts your mobile into your personal virtual guide. And, this Augmented reality tour guide provides you many useful information in a very interactive manner.
This information can consist of interactive maps, related videos or images of the place, you interested in. Moreover, using the camera of your mobile device, Augmented reality technology enables you to retrieve the required information only when and where it’s needed.
Blippar, a world-leading Augmented Reality company has already started to explore the integration of Augmented reality (AR) in the tourism industry. With their Augmented Reality App “AR City“, the company augments your tour experience in more than 300 cities worldwide.
Although, the App is currently in its beta stage, but do check the below YouTube video and feel the innovative utilization of Augmented reality in the tourism industry.
Also, if you love using Google map for roaming around near by places, here’s a good news waiting for you. Yes, during the I/O 2108 conference, Google has announced that they are in the process of adding the beauty of Augmented reality in their existing Google Map.
Thus, in the near future, when you open Google Map, it will not only tell you about your location rather using Augmented reality, it will overlay other useful information like street names, directions and flashing direction-arrows on the live feed of your device camera.
Wrapping up
To summarize, I can say that the integration of Augmented Reality in tourism provides you an ultimate experience. This awesome technology supports you to choose your holiday destination and activities perfectly.
Also, the effectiveness of Augmented Reality (AR) in tourism is not only limited to planning rather extends to the complete journey and other activities too. In other words, Augmented Reality acts as your personal assistant during your holiday trip.
Moreover, it augments the real surroundings around you enriched with useful digital information. Ultimately, it provides an indelible travel experience and let enjoy your holiday trip to the fullest.
That’s all from my side. In the comment section, let me know what you have liked the most? And, If you like my post, do share it with your friends. Also, do let me know about your queries related to augmented reality, if any.
I will try my best to resolve them through my successive blog posts. To keep yourself updated about Augmented reality, don’t forget to subscribe to my website. Additionally, visit my Facebook page and do follow @Augrealitypedia on Twitter.
A great read, thanks for sharing this! The example of Hub Hotel using this technology is something that should be used by all the major hotels for better customer experience.