Virtual reality tours are a powerful marketing tool with a ton of potential. They’re a unique and affordable way to tell your business story. An online virtual tour is a three-dimensional marketing experience that helps keep users engaged by letting them explore and interact with an environment or product.
Virtual reality (VR) offers intriguing possibilities for many businesses. It helps promote your business in a self-paced, realistic and immersive experience. For the sake of business continuity in unprecedented times, we now have a growing VR market. For today’s busy customer convenience is king. It is instantly gratifying to be able to virtually tour a possible tourist location or a prospective house. All from the comfort of your home.
Virtual tours get over five million visits a day and 50% of users depend on virtual tours in their decision making process.
Here is a list of industries that can enjoy using virtual reality tours to engage customers and boost business:
1. Tourism
The travel shopper is an ideal target for virtual reality tours. They have money in the bank and are ready to splurge. By letting them try their holiday before they buy it, you can visually excite the shopper and transform their booking experience.
Rather than viewing their holiday destination statically, people can pan around a complete 360° and interactively explore the place. People are 130% more likely to book a place if there is a virtual tour and they spend 5 to 10 times more on a web application with virtual tours than those without.
A guided tour of famous landmarks, restaurants and hotels will help potential holidaymakers experience the holiday. There will be an increased chance of them booking it. For example, in this virtual reality tour of Australia’s Hamilton Island, the user can experience the Great Barrier Reef, along with scuba diving. Guests can even check out the hotel’s facilities and explore all the water activities.
2. Education
Part of choosing where to go for further education is visiting campuses. This can limit access, especially to those who simply don’t have the time or money to travel up and down the country! Imagine being able to do it all on your computer or phone. Educational institutions who provide VR tours open themselves up to a broader range of applicants. It also allows people to look at the same location multiple times – something a real-world trip wouldn’t do.
Schools and universities could use VR tours for field trips too. A virtual trip to parks, museums and historical sites would be much more affordable for schools and students. It also enables them to visit famous sites, monuments and museums from all over the world.
Colleges and universities often have outbound calling campaigns to attract prospective students. They might already use cutting edge technology like the hybrid cloud or AI-driven data analytics. Adding in VR would be convenient for all parties involved, as they could invite students for a virtual tour through a link sent by email or chat.
3. Real Estate
Wouldn’t it be great to have a 24/7 open house experience? To literally walk through property listings without leaving your home to do so? Virtual reality tours are essential for realtors of the 21st century.
A virtual tour can help facilitate the buying journey immensely. Buyers can gain a true sense of the house they are interested in, with a three-dimensional visit around the premises. They can also shop around more since visiting houses virtually is more comfortable than travelling around town.
The opportunity to view multiple places saves time and money. Sellers with virtual reality tours attract more buyers. Especially those buyers who cannot physically visit the location. Properties with virtual tours receive 40% more clicks compared to those using images.
4. Interior Design and Architecture
According to Architectural Digest, VR will have a massive impact on the design industry. If you design the interior or structure of living spaces, it’s worth having your portfolio accessible in VR. This will let clients experience your projects in 3D, bringing their clients into a hypothetical reality.
Designers can also propose new designs to clients in VR. This is much more effective than having clients sign off on an idea with a designer based on a drawing. Being able to view floor plans in VR will make the design more tangible to your clients, and allow them to accurately design in the actual space.
5. Logistics
Technology has brought huge improvements to logistics, with a large number of companies joining in on the RPA journey, utilizing workforce optimization software, and implementing inventory management solutions. VR tours of warehouses is the next step. Creating a virtual tour of your supply chain facilities will bring them to life for your present and potential customers.
If you have a warehouse based in port, or other far-flung areas, it may be difficult for customers to visit. Providing a VR tour allows them to comfortably see your location and premises. It also avoids inconveniencing your staff, or having to adapt your day-to-day processes to fit visitors in.
Enhance your customer experience by investing in a virtual reality tour for your logistics facilities. Presenting your logistic services virtually acknowledges your customer’s busy schedule. It also lets you be transparent about your sites, giving you the opportunity to build trust and credibility.
6. Hotels and Hospitality Industry
A virtual reality tour can boost the value of your hotel, restaurant or country club. They are designed to make you feel like you are standing inside the property. You can supercharge your booking system with a software that allows you to host digital documents online; and with added VR integration, your booking systems, you can provide potential customers with a more accurate depiction of your property. A brochure can never do justice to your hotel or restaurant.
Especially for people looking to book restaurants or clubs for special events like weddings. A 3D tour has a better ability to show people the seating, the space available and the setting. For events like weddings, businesses could also offer different decor possibilities presented to customers in VR. This will give them a more vivid visualisation of what their special day will look like.
With the ability to transmit the atmosphere of your property, you are no longer competing with other hotels on price alone. Instead, you can rely on the story of your location, and the feelings it invokes. A panoramic view can increase confidence in a buyer, and make your hotel stand out in a crowded online environment.
7. Automotive Industry
A virtual tour can help you sell cars and motorbikes. You could in fact quickly create a virtual tour for your car dealership using many virtual tour softwares. You don’t need to be able to code; a few clicks and you are on your way to a responsive 360° experience to attract customers. Here is a great example of a virtual experience that encompasses a car showroom with a detailed view of the interior and exterior of the car as well.
With an incredibly detailed virtual reality tour of a car, one can almost feel the leather of those seats. You can virtually feel the spaciousness of the car and be motivated to test drive it. Maybe it’ll be possible to offer a VR drive next! In a competitive environment, where marketing automation is common, a virtual tour is a personalised marketing strategy where the car will sell itself.
8. Retail
If you are in retail you might have considered enticing shoppers through a telephone conference. After all, seeing products in motion is different from staged, static images. While it remains imperative that you add pictures and videos to your social media, you can bring a new angle with a VR tour.
Ecommerce is booming. To add virtual shopping to it, is to make the experience unbelievably real and exciting. A virtual tour will obviously boost business as statistics have shown, but a virtual reality department store like eBay in Australia will let you see and buy clothes and other products in 3D. This virtual reality experience does not intend to replace or replicate the physical store, but it is a novel attempt to combine technology with retail.
9. Factories and Plants
Virtual reality tours are necessary for large manufacturing plants. Artificial intelligence has already changed the industry by performing dangerous tasks in place of humans. VR can reduce these risks further. Rather than training new staff in the factory itself, virtual tours allow employee orientation to happen in a safe, interactive environment on cloud servers provided by public cloud services.
It also allows visitors to avoid the red tape. Most industrial factories require certain safety measures that you can skip because you are touring the factory in VR. By adding embedded hotspots to your virtual tour, you can link more information about processes or services of your industrial environment.
10. Museums
Many famous museums including the British Museum in London and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam have 360° excursions for people to see the treasures they have. These tours are incomparable to pictures of museum artefacts, as they evoke a mood and atmosphere that an image cannot. Seeing them in VR can encourage people to visit the museums, and help those who can’t visit engage with their collections.
It’s also possible to offer paid VR tours of exclusive exhibitions, using technology to increase revenue growth as well as interest.
Will a Virtual Reality Tour Take Your Business to the Next Level?
The answer is simple: a big, resounding, yes! Just as essential as it is to add voice, SMS, videos, data to your business applications, so too is it vital to include virtual tours. They’re an important component of the decision-making process for customers, and a great way to increase engagement.
Investing in virtual reality capabilities has an upfront cost. You’ll need a number of technical equipment, high-speed internet providers, and sophisticated software to ensure continuous testing. It’s a hefty investment but VR will definitely grow your online presence and bring exposure to your business. A virtual reality tour provides you with a 24/7 shop window, providing a unique experience to your customers. VR is the future and you should be welcoming it before the competition does.
