As virtual reality (VR) technology becomes increasingly commonplace, the travel industry too hopes to leverage on the exciting potential it affords. Dannon Har goes on a virtual trip to Japan, Vietnam and Australia in a span of 10 minutes, and tells us what his experience was like.

Why
Flight Centre Singapore is boosting its storefront retail experience with VR headsets equipped with 360-degree video content that showcases destinations around the world.

The headset was made available on November 25. While it is currently available only at its headquarters at 137 Cecil Street, there are plans to roll out the headsets to its other two stores in Singapore in the coming weeks.

What
This is the first time a travel agency in South-east Asia is employing the use of VR as a mainstay sales and marketing tool, and probably one of the few in the world to do so.

As of now, customers can be transported to three destinations – Tokyo, Hoi An and Cairns – upon donning the Samsung Gear VR headsets, which uses the Samsung Galaxy S6 smartphone as the video storage and playback device. This is the same technology used by Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts which launched its own major VR initiative just last month.

How
The experience of putting on one of these VR headsets is novel and exciting as it is a reactive system which portrays real-life vision, in a sense that as you swerve your head, your entire vision sways with you to capture different parts of the panorama. This also means that videos have to be watched multiple times in order to see everything completely.

It is cool to see yourself looking out at the landscape from a hot air balloon in Cairns, hear food sizzling as it is being wok-fried in Hoi An, and watch as Tokyoites wave affectionately at you wherever you look.

But novelty is a resource that wears off fast. This is only my second time using a VR headset to experience travel destinations, the first being the aforementioned Shangri-La’s VR tool, and already the fun-factor has markedly subsided.

Luckily, these devices weren’t designed merely to entertain, but to flaunt and highlight travel locales. To that end, it is a highly successful apparatus of content marketing. It is the second-best thing to actually travelling to these featured destinations.

As Suyin Lee, managing director of Flight Centre Travel Group, puts it: “It enhances the discovery process and provides a try-before-you-buy option for customers. It never really replaces the real thing of course, but it does give people inspiration to try a new destination. It evokes emotion, stimulates interest and provides assurance as to what one might expect.”

Verdict
Employing VR in an accessible manner for Flight Centre’s brick and mortar customers is a definite boon and goes in line with the agency’s expansion strategy to erect a greater number of physical stores islandwide.

Not only do walk-ins have an inventive option to find out more about a destination, the mere creation of 360-degree video content also opens up avenues for monetisation such as content sales.

Name: Flight Centre Singapore

Contact details
Tel: (65) 6692-9778
Website: www.flightcentre.com.sg

TRISARA Phuket has launched a digital studio to help guests create compelling stories of their holiday in photo, video or even virtual reality formats – a first in the industry.

Resorts must come up with new points of differentiation to please younger clients and face up to today’s disruptors such as Airbnb and OTAs, said Kitt Pattamasaevi, son of Narong Pattamasaevi, chairman of Montara Hospitality Group which owns the luxury resort.

The Director’s Den (D-Den), equipped with the latest equipment and manned by an in-house team of professional producers and digital artists, will make movie directors out of guests. Its former purpose as a library has given way to this new value.

“Most people do not have the time, expertise and resources to master the art of producing top-quality photo, video or VR keepsakes. Plus, most people today do not just want to consume content, they want to create it,” Kitt said.

But apart from being a service innovation, D-Den is also a sales and marketing tool as invariably, photos, videos and virtual reality are made to be shared – these days widely on social media – with the resort actually controlling the quality of the production by offering such a service.

“We have a lot of guests for whom storytelling is important. Our clients from every single market are now younger. Four years ago, their average age typically was 50 years, today it’s 42 years. As well, we have developed new markets such as China and Korea, and these markets comprise younger people, mostly honeymooners, so we have to find ways to engage them.
Younger people take selfies, love to share their holiday memories, but often don’t have the time or patience to do so in a compelling way,” said Kitt.

So D-Den provides them the solution. If clients just want someone to identify the most instagrammable spots at Trisara, a buddy will be assigned to accompany them. If they want to rent equipment instead of using their mobile, there are GoPro cameras for rent.

Clients can then select one of the storyboards which have been prepared for them and, with the help of dedicated producers, direct how they want the story to unfold and in what format – movie, digital or virtual reality (VR). D-Den has also prepared destination footages capturing, say, a sunset or a hermit crab moving in the sand, so they don’t have to waste moments shooting those scenes.

“For special moments, such as proposals, VR is so much more engaging than photos or videos. They can almost relive every moment in 360 degree – it’s as close as being there when someone watches it,” said Kitt.

Fully launched this week, D-Den is a profit centre and charges guests different fees for the services required. In conjunction with its launch, Trisara is offering a four-night stay with the fourth night free. This package comes with perks such as daily breakfast for two, round trip private airport transfers, free Wi-Fi. Priced from 97,400 baht (US$2,722) for an Ocean Pool Room, the offer is available till March 31, 2016.

LATEST figures by ForwardKeys show a 159 per cent drop in net flight bookings to Brussels since a lockdown came into force following the Paris attacks.

“If bookings are 100 per cent down, that indicates that no net bookings were made. 159 per cent down means that in addition to no bookings being made, there were cancellations equal to 59 per cent of the number of bookings made on the equivalent day last year,” explained Olivier Jager, co-founder and CEO of ForwardKeys.

While every source market has seen net cancellations since the lockdown, the UK, Italy and Austria are the most affected with a drop of 191 per cent, 206.5 per cent and 236 per cent respectively.

By segment, business travel is more affected with bookings 195 per cent down as compared to 106 per cent down for leisure travel.