Destination Metaverse
By Pako Rodríguez, Consultant specialised in tourism, & Javi Creus, Founder and Strategy Director of Ideas for Change
(Originally published in Spanish)
Web 3 and its combination with different technologies brings us the metaverse. This virtual environment opens up a new space for interaction between people and among people and the new environments generated. What impact is it having on the tourism sector and, above all, what does the future of the metaverse hold for travel?
The book From Hospitium to Tourism 4.0 traces the history of travel and how, for thousands of years, humans have sought, for different reasons, to meet other people and seek refuge and protection in the shelter of other communities through peer-to-peer agreements. According to Harari, it is this ability to cooperate on a large scale and the flexibility to embrace change that characterises our species and has allowed us to control the planet.
One thing that the pandemic we are leaving behind has taught us is that human beings continue to seek meet with other people and to get to know other environments. And this is reflected in the latest data, which point to a much faster recovery of the tourism sector than expected. We want to travel, move, get to know and meet in order to experience.
The Internet has opened many windows for us to look out from our devices. Web 1 allowed us to expand our information capacity at home based on links. Web 2 expanded our social space with likes and connected movement thanks to mobile phones. Web 3 immerses us, thanks to blockchain and the combination of other technologies, in new three-dimensional, sensorial digital spaces, parallel to reality, where a large amount of data is collected and we interact in a way that was impossible until now.
The question that arises is whether these new digital sensory spaces will represent a paradigm shift in these experiences. Whether the different metaverses will be destinations in themselves or, rather, will simply be a support for the marketing of physical destinations and the offer they contain. Most of the sources consulted seem to point to the latter. In any case, it is worth remembering what Albert Cañigueral wrote in this article at the end of last year: "when television arrived, what was done were radio programmes with cameras in front of them. Nobody could have imagined the new TV formats, much less video-on-demand services". In other words, what matters is not what we think we can do today, but what we will be able to do tomorrow in the metaverse. Zuckerberg, on the contrary, hopes to find in this new parallel reality a substitute for travel. For the moment, his figures do not seem to support this bet.
Some data tell us that, in certain aspects of our lives, physical encounters are already giving way to experiences in the metaverse. For example, according to the study "The Metaverse: An Insider's View", Generation Z gamers spend twice as much time with friends in the metaverse as they do in real life (12.2 hours a week playing video games versus 6.6 hours with friends in person). This does not mean that Generation Z no longer wants to travel, as video games and travel are not mutually exclusive activities. On the other hand, it does indicate that meeting people around us in the different spaces offered by the metaverse is already an important option for some activities.
To see the metaverse in a more practical way, let's look at some of the uses it is already being put to in the travel industry.
Some tourism-related uses
Destinations
Benidorm has become one of the first territories worldwide to launch its own metaverse. With Benidorm Land, recently released, the traditional destination seeks to position itself and attract the Z and Alpha generation segment through the video game sector, offering, through the Steam platform, a virtual visit to the municipality with your own avatar, where you can interact with objects and learn about the attractions on offer. The aim is to attract this public and convert them into future visitors.
Decision-making
In terms of decision-making, coupled with what artificial intelligence already offers, travel advisors can use these spaces to meet their potential clients through their respective avatars and become their virtual managers. Together with the above, travel decisions will be increasingly immersive and hyper-personalised and will leave behind the negative surprises that occur when the reality does not match what is offered through traditional websites.
Hotels
The law firm Écija at the first 100% metaverse roundtable between partners from Spain and Latin America. Source and access to the sample video that the firm posted on Twitter
Closely related to the previous point, for Marriott, the metaverse is a new digital marketing tool that will change the way travellers shop before, after and during their trip. It will allow users to experience destinations without having to physically travel to the place they want, and allow them to learn about the experience that hotels and resorts can provide. The aim is that trying out destinations and experiences does not become a substitute, but a complement.
The creation of virtual meeting and conference rooms is also planned as an added value for hotels, which already have extensive experience in MICE tourism and could take advantage of this knowledge to apply it to virtual congresses.
To dress up these professional avatars, Meta already has an online shop with some of the main brands.
Meanwhile, RIU has made its debut in the metaverse with its emblematic hotel RIU Plaza de España. Thanks to a virtual experience, you can visit the hotel through the details of the decoration, the lobby, or you can go up to its distinctive rooftop. The project has been carried out taking into account the gamification of the visit, so that you can interact with some elements arranged for this purpose. In this video you can see better what this initiative offers.
Teleworking
In the same way, and as mentioned at the beginning, it is true that the pandemic has shown us how much we want to travel. But it has also shown us that teleworking is a trend that cannot be reversed and that we can even become more productive without the encounter. And this is what the CEO of Airbnb believes, who announced last April that none of the company's employees will have to return to the office, beyond the occasional quarterly meeting. In other words, working no longer requires physical presence in many sectors, and is even compatible with being permanently on the road. The metaverse could become a meeting place for colleagues, replacing zoom meetings, while the real meeting continues to take place while we travel and work from different parts of the world.
Space travel
Finally, it is worth remembering that the history of travel is an evolution in which in its beginnings only a minority travelled, mainly due to the availability of the means to do so, and the rest were content with the stories and books that told and made them dream of distant destinations described by those fortunate enough to be able to do so.
Space travel is now a reality and promises to disrupt tourism. At the moment it is only affordable for a few pockets. The metaverse could become these new travel books and help us experience space and planets like Mars in a way that future generations will surely be able to experience first-hand. NASA has already teamed up with the creators of Fornite to carry out this experience that promises to bring a unique experience to those who, for the moment, see this type of travel as distant.
These proposals lead us to some conclusions...
The possible futures are unimaginable from a present focused on what is possible today with the technology available nowadays. The metaverse is fuelled by advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the internet of things, virtual and augmented reality to enhance and improve the user experience. The development of quantum computing, edge computing, the internet of senses or behaviour and a 6G network that provides them all with a transaction speed that is unimaginable today opens up a new range of possibilities by impacting all these technologies exponentially. In other words, there are options that we cannot imagine at present thanks to new technological and social combinations that will be generated by these advances. And, along with all this, of course, the data generated with each interaction, the new learning and the new uses that will emerge.
On the contrary, in this article, people from the technological world such as Enrique Dans question the potential of the metaverse and compare it to the rise and fall of Second Life, a virtual environment that some 20 years ago also threatened to change everything and changed rather nothing. Here, in addition to the technological leap, a major difference is the adoption of the metaverse by younger people as something increasingly commonplace.
Probably, if we were to read this same article ten years from now, we would be surprised at how far we were from what we thought would happen. Still, we are betting that encounter will remain the essence of humanity. Travel, though perhaps limited to the most essential, i.e. pleasure or necessity, will continue to be part of our lives on a global and widespread level. The metaverse will serve to travel where it is not yet possible: space, the past and, probably, an imagined future.
Ideas for Change wants to continue this conversation. To do so, we will bring together some experts in an upcoming webinar to which you are invited and in which we encourage you to participate by sending questions and comments through our twitter account. Are you up for it?
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