As virtual reality site inspections continue to improve with the technology — and more venues get on board with them — are meeting planners ready to ditch the IRL version?
Walk the show floor at any meetings industry convention and you’re bound to see at least one convention and visitors bureau offering a fun and funky virtual reality (VR) tour of the city, soaring over skyscrapers and zooming in for a close-up of the convention center.
But while they may be a fun gimmick for trade shows, where most agree VR has the most obvious applicability is for virtual site inspections. Planners, who are perennially short on time, like the idea, and more hotels and convention centers are offering the VR site inspection option, are VR site inspections really at the point where they can replace the in-real-life site inspection?
Few would argue that VR site inspections aren’t better than viewing static images, or even videos, on a website, because they do give you a fully, rendered 360-degree, much more immersive experience than an image alone. That may be why, according to a BIzzabo survey, 70% of venues are starting to offer VR tours of their venues.
Among the early-ish adopters is the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, which offers a virtual tour through each level of its 160,000 square feet of meeting space. Another is the W Rome, which offers VR tours of its meeting spaces, as well as its guest rooms and rooftop views.
VR site inspections also can save time and money. On the planner side, VR lets them explore venues around the world without leaving their office, saving both time and travel costs. Venues also save time in having to have staff on hand to conduct on in-person site inspection, plus the costs involved in hosting a potential client. Plus, VR site inspection tours can help shorten the sales cycle and enable clients to make decisions more quickly and easily.
But, while they do offer a number of advantages, most on the planner and venue side say that VR technology still doesn’t provide the full experience of being physically in the space. While the high-resolution displays and wide field-of-view headsets can provide an immersive experience, and 3D audio systems create pretty realistic soundscapes, they still can’t fully replicate the ambient sounds, air quality and tactile feel of the place.
Also, the VR site inspection experience is even more highly curated than an in-person site visit, so planners don’t have the opportunity to poke around on their own and explore all the nooks and crannies, much less have candid conversations with guests, staff and even other meeting hosts and attendees at the venue.
So, while VR site inspections can be a great way to sift through an initial venue list to come up with a shortlist of venues you really want to experience in person, the answer to the question of whether a planner can just put on a headset and get the same experience as an in-person site visit is probably still no, especially for critical events where planners need to be able to assess specific details to ensure that the venue meets all their requirements.
As technology continues to advance, the gap between virtual and in-person inspections may narrow, but for now, VR serves as a complementary tool rather than a full replacement for traditional site visits in the meeting planning process.
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