While virtual reality can be used to attract travelers to a specific destination, augmented reality has the potential to enhance the experience as it is lived. From the point of view of sales and advertising, AR is a great way to show offers and promotions in real-time: a traveler could point the camera at a restaurant and see the menu-of-the-day come to life, or watch hotel room rates shown over the "real" property. It is likely that the future of travel will be made up of a mix of multiple realities: phenomenal, virtual, and augmented.

How will hotels be able to benefit from the technology?

Saikrishnan Ranganathan
Saikrishnan Ranganathan
Co-Founder and CEO of SensorFlow

The pandemic propels the hospitality industry to innovate and offer new and exciting ways for guests' experience. As the industry seeks to upsell, enhance their guest experience and service offerings to stimulate demands, AR becomes an extremely valuable hotel technology during this recovery period. Augmented Reality technology can help solve the hotel industry's challenge in enhancing the physical environment and guest experiences without the costly and physical disruptions to their operations and facilities. With digital transformation and improving operational standards being the go-to recovery plan for the industry, AR could easily disrupt and transform the hotel industry around the world.

A valuable application of the technology is to enrich the guest experience by gathering hotel information for guests both before and after they arrive at the hotel. Augmented reality technology can make all that information readily available to guests at all times, making their stay effortless.

In this age of strict travel regulations, travellers would place extra efforts in researching travel destinations and accommodations before committing to the trip. Information-gathering becomes a critical part of their buying journey. This technology can easily facilitate hotels to address this new guest demand and trends. For example, a 360° room tour, complete with information about amenities, availability and pricing can be used by the hotel marketing department creatively to attract direct bookings as AR enhances the booking experiences for the customer.

Another innovative way is to offer a fully immersive in-room experience of an alternate dimension where guests get to see their room's environment transformed into an alternate dimension. This is especially relevant to the current era where guests are apprehensive about the health and safety of a new environment, which increases their tendency to stay indoors. Additionally, the increased interactivity and enhancement of in-room experience complements the hotel industry's current trends of offering staycation packages and transforming their rooms into a working space - all activities that appeal to guests who are looking to stay in the room most of the time.

While the pandemic has brought unprecedented crisis for the hotel industry, it has also accelerated the application of disruptive technology to adapt and innovate their current operations. Similar to how hotels are beginning to benefit from the values of adopting smart technologies like AI and IoT solutions to recover, AR is providing hotels with an innovative solution to bounce back from the crisis and come out stronger and more competitive than ever before.

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