In the holiday before the holiday

A Hotel right on the white sand beach. The Breakfast is served on bamboo tables under the palm trees, and the hotel’s private beach is a friendly hotel staff has reserved a section of a deck. The sea is crystal clear, in the distance, a fisherman drives the boat.

If you are planning a trip, you need first of all one thing: a Lot of imagination, to the place it should go. In the holiday arrived, it instead changes as follows: In the musty-smelling room a cockroach scurries across the sandy floor in the shower. The mattress is hard as a rock, the view through the dirty window provides a construction site.

You can avoid such disappointments well. New technologies, however, enable the resort prior to the departure of almost life-like look – if for hotel owners and operators to participate. With Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) can leisure hotel rooms inspect virtual tours of cruise ships, or even entire parts of the city make.

“VR is the full Immersion in the strange new worlds,” says Kristine honey, a consultant at the company’s tourism future. VR glasses is the most common device for this: the user will be played using the glasses of the real world, shielded and content on Display and speakers. The movement in the digital world and the interaction with the space to be simulated realistically.

In the meantime, many travel agencies use the technology to make it feel like the holidays. The operator Thomas Cook, for example, has equipped 880 offices with VR-headsets. The 360-degree view is to give travelers a lot better impressions of your holiday destination than the usual catalog photos.

“It offers the possibility to explain a journey is better,” says Georg Welbers, Marketing and sales Manager at Thomas Cook. A Hotel, for example, could be under the microscope, such as the allocation of the rooms or the view from the balcony. “The customer can see that there is, for example, in room 321 a beautiful view of the sea, but in 322 of the larger balcony is available,” says Welbers.

Already in travel Agency in the Hotel to look around

“So you can sit in a travel Agency and by a cruise ship to run, a scenic flight over a Region, or a Hotel,” says honey. For the preparation of a trip, or as Inspiration to be of great help. Impressions by Virtual Reality could take passengers doubt. The expert believed that travel companies are using VR, therefore, easier to sell higher-quality and more expensive products.

But Virtual Reality is not just for the holidays the preparation, but also during the vacation. In Cologne, for example, visitors can see the city on a new VR Tour, as she looked in the Imperial period. In Legoland Germany, guests provide in the coming season on a roller coaster is a virtual race against characters from the LEGO world, via VR glasses. And on the new expedition ships for Hurtigruten passengers can follow with the glasses under water drones.

In addition to the glasses, there is another Form of virtual reality: Augmented Reality. “While VR brings the user a virtual to a strange place, provides Augmented Reality and context-related information,” explains Dirk Schart Reflect by the company, the VR and AR applications. The idea behind it: “we often search for information. AR brings you where you are needed.” The user is shielded by a pair of glasses of his environment. Rather, he will receive additional information via Text and image on the own Smartphone or Tablet.

In the home AR help Apps when planning a trip

With Apps like Wikitude and Google Lens information on places, shops or Restaurants can be retrieved. With the blazing mobile phone in front of the Cologne Cathedral you will see about the Display not only the Cathedral, but also information on the history, size and construction.

And there is even more: Download the users of the language packs from Google Translate download, translated the App by using the camera of the device is also a restaurant map or directions, which then appears in English in the Display. In the home AR Apps to help with trip planning. The digital information can Supplement the information from travel brochures. For that it is scanned with the App, the corresponding AR icon, then additional pictures and Videos are displayed.

In the future, unlimited possibilities offered by AR-sheer. As a vegetarian, only vegetarian Restaurants can be displayed. Or lovers of culture will be informed about the places of residence of artists.

The question of whether virtual travel will eventually replace the real holiday is. This is what the experts believe. “Holiday is an interactive experience between people. It can’t replace,” says Welbers.