The reasons to have a virtual tour for your property is endless. I will cite couple. 1 for a city hotel and the other for a destination hotel.
City Based Hotel – A large portion of your business is brought in by the Sales team. Groups and events business. A sales person enabled with a virtual tour would be able to showcase your property as if the prospect is literally walking inside your property. Imagine how powerful of a sales tool it would be.
Destination Hotel/Resort – A virtual experience best showcases why one should come to your destination and stay at your property. Sounds of silence when someone is staying at your beach cottage. That is something a virtual experience can deliver at scale to any prospect looking for accommodations in your location. A great tool for the paid media people trying to generate direct online revenue. Just ask them if a virtual tour of the property, the rooms, the f&b outlets etc, will fetch you a better RoAS.
I am not going into all the possible use cases of virtual experiences here. I’m trying to provide you with an overview of what it is, and how it benefits your property.
Coming to the costs of getting something like this done, multiple businesses offer this as services. A quick search reveals there are vendors starting from as low as 8000 to more than a few lacs. Based on your property, the features and amenities the costs tend to vary.
I was having a conversation with a senior hospitality sales leader and casually asked, “then why don’t hoteliers do this more often? If the benefits far outweigh the investment?”
His answer, “maybe hoteliers have not yet understood the use cases?”
If that is the case, this page is my effort to showcase all that is to the usage of Digital Virtual Experiences for the Travel and Hospitality Community.
The first e.g. for such an experience “Sell the destination.”
A digital experience highlighting the place, along with all the businesses who want to be part of this experience. Through this tour a tourist can virtually explore your property along with various other things at your destination. 360 photographs and videos of the cool things your guests can enjoy while at the location. A digital scene like – “On the beach with a yooung couple sipping on coconut water. Or a scene of a night lounge with beer and great music.”
If there’s someone who wants to come to your location, if they see such an experience don’t you think you would be able to sell at a higher ADR? I’ll tell you why. The guests from these marketing efforts value comfort and experience. They value the fact, that if in your virtual tour your shown how beautiful the sunset looks from the balcony of your beach cottage, then they would pay a premium to stay in that exact same cottage. They are the outliers through which even if marginally, you would be able to sell few rooms at a premium, with a “content creator package”. If you’ve not read about partnerships, do give it a read. It will help you get better as you look at creating more partnerships in the local travel community.
Let me elaborate the concept of partnership with regards to destination marketing.
In the virtual tour, you would need to showcase few other businesses. Barter a deal with them, such that a greater upsell opportunity is created when a visitor comes to the destination. Think cafes, diners, cab service providers, markets, local artisans, tour guides, photographer, videographers, content creators. Partnerships is what will fuel growth in the new economy. The digital economy.
A virtual tour is the start to keep a safe footing in the digital world. It can be marketed across platforms. Nowadays even various OTA platforms are allowing 360 photographs to get uploaded as gallery photographs. Users want transparency. There’s nothing more transparent than a virtual tour.
Start by listing all your hotel photographs in 360 onto your Google Business Profile. A knowledgable maps expert should be able to guide you.
So, what are you waiting for, go get going. Get your virtual tour done for your property and take the first step in a post AI Digital World.