How Augmented Reality (AR) is Changing the Travel & Tourism Industry

Mrudul Shah
Towards Data Science
6 min readAug 21, 2019

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how is augmented reality used in travel tourism

According to a Statista report, the Augmented Reality AR market across the globe is predicted to nurture from 5.91 billion to 198 billion U.S. dollars by the year 2025. Augmented Reality trends has materialized as a constructive tool for different businesses. It allows them to transform the way customers observe their surroundings.

AR is one of the most emerging types of technologies and will be more helpful in the upcoming years. This innovation in technology has been predominantly beneficial for those working in travel-based industries. Augmented Reality, or AR, offers an excellent selling experience and augmented environments, which can be enhanced in diverse ways in the tourism sector. In this blog post, you will get a better look at the impact of AR in the travel industry.

Importance of AR in Travel

With the power of enthralling human minds, AR is altering the game for marketers, and we will explore how Augmented Reality solutions can help travel sector. The technology is breaching innovative doors for the travel industry to improve their customer experience. However, the travel and tourism domain has already shown significant transitions with Augmented Reality.

Travel and tourism business is a highly researched segment. The customers in the travel industry always plan their journey, stay, or food places to explore through extensive research. The pursuit for data and information does not come to a standstill for a customer even after his arrival at their targeted travel destination. Furthermore, all these information are explored in a range of mobile devices.

Augmented Reality for the Travel Industry

Here is where AR enters in making transformations for the travel industry. AR has the capability to add to the search experiences by offering interactive ad engaging information. With pioneering mobile apps, these augmented experiences can be made extensive to the travellers by simplifying their travel search and building up reliance.

Even, travel specialists have estimated that by accepting the power of AR can establish different user experiences which can turn to be a boon for the tourism domain and travel industry.

How is Augmented Reality Used in Tourism and Travel Domains

Augmented Reality and tourism are fashioned for each other. What is the key activity of a tourist? Traveling and gripping every portion of the information they can be found related to a destination.

When you tour to a city, such as Rome or Venice, which are full of attractions, you can simply miss a fascinating place. An Augmented Reality mobile application can hand round as a real-life tour guide. Augmented Reality apps for the travel domain can enable travellers to explore more about destinations through the camera viewfinder functionality. As the camera catches the landscape in the region, the mobile application marks places of significance and provides added information about it.

The Augmented Reality Tourist Experience

These days the guests know where they desire to travel. People have a sense of destinations that will take them precisely where they want to travel using their smartphones. However, AR can effectively enhance people’s travel experience with interactive maps, making them more fitting. Travellers are obliged when they get to use an engaging, easy to use and helpful ways for navigation. Following are the applications of Augmented Reality in the travel and hospitality sector.

The Bright Future of Augmented Reality in Travel Industry

The travel industry is all about generating exclusive experiences, and AR has the prospective to back this business sector. The technology can support tourism with new styles of customer servicing. It is assumed that in the coming time, Augmented Reality will drastically change the business models of the tourism sector. Here is a current list of how Augmented Reality is delivering values for both end customers and the tourism business.

Augmented Reality Trimming Down Language Differences

It is both difficult and appealing to travel to a foreign destination without having a translator to guide you. However, with AR technology, smartphones can be utilized to translate foreign languages for different types of users.

AR Apps Ensuring No Travellers Are Being Lost

Discovering your way in a foreign town can be challenging. However, AR turns navigation apps smarter by adding digital components like arrows and other applicable details. By integrating and combining smartphone cameras to Google Maps, AR can improve travel experiences of navigating a new place.

Improving Travel Conveniences with AR Mobile Apps

Travels can turn chaotic with lack of correct and well-timed information. With AR, travel brands are enlarging mobile applications for tourists, to improve their travel experiences.

The Augmented Reality for Travel and Hotel Accommodation

The hospitality sector is amongst one of the foremost fields to utilize AR technologies. You may speculate in which way hotels can use AR and be amazed by the variety of options.

AR in Marketing and Advertising for Hotels

By using AR, you can build all-around room tours with lodging details and prices when exploring a hotel. It is a good way to market and advertise your hotel for engaging targeted guests to explore a comprehensive scale of hotel services. This turns one-time guests into loyal guests.

Suppose you are in your hotel room and require searching out about housekeeping, destinations to see, distances to places and other travel services. So you can immediately get your smartphone or tablet, unlock the hotel mobile app, point to a marker, and access the needed information.

Effortless and full of ease, that’s actually Augmented Reality for the travel industry. For instance, some of the hotels have an interactive wall map in the rooms, that guests can point their mobile phone to explore the local travel attractions in the nearby areas.

Innovative Ways to Detect Hotels Through AR

Today’s tourists won’t pay consideration to straightforward pamphlets. AR makes it possible to find out information on a novel level by having 3D animations from printed brochures. Hotels collaborate with content based companies and marketing agencies to create and publish AR based advertisements in magazines. Further, hotel mobile app users can also scan the ads to open a presentation video.

Communication & Interactions With Hotels Using AR

Pokemon Go has stimulated many other businesses to use AR, including the travel and hospitality industry. Augmented Reality apps assist in envisioning how such Gamification can persuade and interest people to stay in a picky hotel, especially the youngest ones. Check-out how some of the hotels provide its guests with a mobile app, which showcases every corner of their hotel with supplementary AR objects.

AR in Restaurants, Bars, & Cafes

Keeping it concise, restaurants and bars can utilize AR solutions for their advantage in quite a few ways. Restaurants can have menus with an engaging and interactive 360-view of every food dish and its ingredients through AR application. AR games at several restaurants use Pokémon Go to attract clients with the assistance of mobile apps using AR to offer details about restaurants, cafes, and nearby bars.

AR in Transportation

Visualize your plane has just landed, or you step out of a bus, train or a car in an unknown place, and you are unsure where to go from there. However, in that scenario, if you have a travel mobile app with AR, you can point out at the transportation objects to get best possible directions, travel route, next destination and places to travel.

For foreign travellers, in particular, this could be fairly pleasurable while their tours and trips. With AR you can turn a metro map into an engaging guide in numerous languages.

AR in Excursions & Travel Attractions

Discovering tourist destinations and excursions with Augmented Reality transforms those traditional city tours in a bit more amazing. We can travel back in time, bearing in mind the advancement of landmarks in time outlook, get pleasure from 3D models of places, and get fun tour guides. Best instances are theme parks, gardens, and zoos.

As per Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, they choose AR to VR headsets. According to him, Augmented Reality is additionally sociable, interactive, and concerned. AR in parks or zoos enables better Gamification, navigation, awareness, and interesting quiz. AR in museums enables travellers to view a complete live representation of vanished animals based on their structural skeletons.

Key Takeaways

Traveling is always an innovative and learning experience. With modernized devices and tools, Augmented Reality in travel and tourism comes exceedingly useful for hotel tours, booking enabling information, no language barriers, as well as superior navigation. Augmented Reality is already pleasing to the eye by boosting travel experiences with inventive mobile apps.

Author Bio:

Mrudul Shah is a CTO of Technostacks Infotech which is a mobile app development company in India & USA. He is helping his entire development team and global clients to access new technologies, interests in learning and sharing IT technology news trends.

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I’m CSO at Technostacks Infotech, helping the team to adopt new technologies, interests in learning and sharing IT technology strategies with news trends.