Virtual Reality Reducing Travelling Costs

Imagine yourself in a world when you do not need to get to the airport 3 hours before the flight, in a world when you can go on business without standing up from your table.

Arthur van Hoff, a general director of Jaunt, is trying to make such world a reality. His company is developing a technology of virtual travelling. According to van Hoff, if by 2017 the technology of virtual reality will reach such standards as experts suppose, the whole concept of “business trip” may disappear for good. Below you can read how it may happen.   

Travelling Using Virtual Reality Will Become a Trend

Virtual reality is not a toy for gamers anymore. Even today big companies not connected with the industry, started to use the technology for different purposes.  

For instance, such companies as Ascape and Tourism Australia are going to use such slogans in their advertising companies “Become a traveler in virtual reality” or “Australia is the place you can experience”. These companies allow their clients to travel to real places, not leaving their houses.

Travel agencies start to cooperate with companies engaged in virtual reality development. These companies are eager to try how mini-tours in virtual reality can increase their sales of real tours. And it seems that this method really works. For instance, users that visited a virtual Manhattan will buy tours to New York 190% more often.  

Halls for Virtual Meeting

Travelling and business trips need a lot of time and money, especially when it concerns small and medium enterprises. If virtual travelling will become real it will save a lot of money.  

Virtual meeting halls that may help to fulfill the idea already exist. For instance, company AltspaceVR is working at a project called Social VR (social virtual reality). Thanks to the project people can share virtual reality with friends and colleagues. Having many sensors, user’s avatar can reproduce all the motions and face expressions of the owner, creating a full-scale illusion of real time communication.  

In fact, today modern technologies can help us to avoid real business meetings and start using virtual ones. And if is possible, the only question to arise is how much time we will need to use them on permanent basis.

What Should Be Improved

However, before everything described above will become as commonplace as using Skype, some things have to be changed.

Firstly, virtual reality is not widespread. Though some projects like  Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard are very interesting and exciting, it is unlikely that many people would prefer such services to real meetings. Virtual reality should become more popular.  

Secondly, present virtual reality is really far from perfection. The helmets should become smarter, more mobile and get additional sensors. For instance, they should be equipped with eye tracking systems.

Changes to Happen

One more obstacle preventing virtual reality meeting is a tradition. Unfortunately for virtual reality lovers, business still largely depends on holding hands. Directors listed in Fortune 500 (500 the richest companies in the world) still prefer to discuss important issues tête-a-tête, refusing to use phone calls for this purpose.  

However, the technology is likely to get adapted from the very “bottom”. People who have to work with a limited budget can be interested in it. They are businessmen of small and medium business. Probably as small and medium business will become successful, the technology will also spread among leaders.

Something Remains Unaltered

Even in the future, some businessmen will prefer personal meetings to any technologies. Personal meeting can provide some level of trust that technologies fail to do. The director who sends a representative to visit some partners shows his serious intention and the ability to take responsibility.   That’s some things can not be replaced by any technologies.