Navitaire, an Amadeus company, recently unveiled the world’s first travel search and booking experience. Right from selecting the destination to paying for the entire trip, the entire process can be carried out without leaving virtual reality while covering all aspects like visually selecting plane seat and browsing rental cars. The concept was developed by Justin Wilde, a user experience developer at Navitaire, with the objective to allow travellers to complete an entire travel booking all in VR and was ready for booking in four months.
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“I see a future in which the internet will be a 3D experience, and everyone will have their own portable 3D headsets. This will be a much more natural experience for us, because the world we live in has three dimensions. I think technology, and the way we design user experience online should reflect that too,” says Wilde.
While virtual reality has long been termed useful in travel, most of the applications seen until now have been revolving around marketing. Brands would either use VR to introduce new products or promote destinations using virtual reality as an inspirational tool. Navitaire goes a step ahead here and builds something for the part where a user browser his or her options and actually buys.
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The use cases we have seen until now also limited the interest of brands in virtual reality. Creating VR content is resource intensive and smaller brands couldn’t see the value in investing in something that won’t drive business directly. Major brands like Etihad and Marriott were investing in VR content but it is not quite possible to filter the customers driven by that to measure impact.
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Source: travhq