AR and VR bring a fresh touch to the hospitality industry

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Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Augmented reality and virtual reality have been gaining market in the last years, but in the last year, we can notice it becoming more mainstream as it gets in our everyday life. The most broadcasted example of this is Pokemon Go, the app that brought augmented reality to 650 million phones around the world broke barriers for the technology and now everyone wants a taste of it.

Since then Snapchat has implemented AR stickers on their cameras. Facebook has been investing heavily on virtual reality since the acquisition of Oculus Rift for 2 billion dollars on 2014. On April this year, the social network launched the beta version of Spaces, where anyone with an Oculus rift can create an animated avatar and visit any place where there is a picture or video in 360.

As more of technology supports Augmented reality and Virtual reality, those tools are penetrating other markets beyond tech. Hospitality is one of them. As there are more options more events start to see the possibilities in this technology. This year the Sports Technology Awards applied Augmented Reality at several points of their event going from marketing and information pre-event to attractions during the event as useful information as table plans or even the menu. The event that was held on May 4th, Star Wars day, also had the help of some of the characters from the saga to announce the winners. You can read more about this action on skift.

This is just the beginning. As more people risk it on augmented reality more possibilities appear. My personal dream is for the Serendipity Machine to go on augmented reality, and when I get in a Seats2meet location I can just take my phone and see what people are working on and what they need help with only by looking at my screen. Wouldn’t that be the perfect icebreaker? And also way easier to connect and to know how and who I can help! Or for Google Map to have a virtual guide I can follow, which will only tell me to turn to the right, instead of ‘go south’. Where is south? Anyway, the sky is the limit and now is the time to think how to implement AR and VR on your own event or meeting.