Hotel Virtual Tour Increases Hotel Booking Sales, Experts Reveal
BlogDecember 12, 2019

Hotel Virtual Tour Increases Hotel Booking Sales, Experts Reveal

For the past few years, most hospitality businesses have tried and experimented with hotel virtual tour technology. Some hotels produced virtual tours on their websites and social media channels. The 360 virtual tour technology enables potential guests and customers to look, reserve, and book for rooms.

Oftentimes, the hotel virtual tour is shot using a 360-degree camera (panoramic view) to film all angles and directions at once. Let us uncover the evolution of hotel virtual tour; as well as the hotels that incorporate this technology to boost their bookings and sales.

How Hotel Virtual Tour Helps Increase Room Reservations and Bookings

The Pioneering Hotels

Some of the leading hotels that incorporate hotel virtual tour in their business are IHG, Kimpton, and Marriott. They recently launched a 360-3d virtual reality tour that showcases their luxury rooms and suites.

hotel virtual tour
Most hotels claim their booking sales increased by tenfold after using hotel virtual tour.

It enables their guests to explore the company’s features, amenities, and facilities without leaving their respective rooms. The hotel virtual tour also lets the customers reserve and make direct bookings at a distance. Meanwhile, Graduate Hotel’s Director of Sales and Revenue, Larkin MacDonald says their sales and marketing campaigns become easier as they consolidate it in one platform.

The Study

Visiting Media reveals most hotel brands need to recreate an experience closest to the feeling of visiting the property physically. It also establishes emotional connections to the customers while providing a one of a kind experience to them. The study also shows they can synchronize all their sales assets easily; thanks to a single centralized platform where they can plan appointment schedules and group sales.

European Hotels

Meanwhile, the Accor hotels in Europe like Fairmont Le Montreux Palace, Raffles Europejski Warsaw, Sofitel Munich Bayerpost, etc, also deployed the said solution to cater to their customer’s desires to experience their hotels virtually.

Their virtual tours incorporate immersive visuals like 3d photos, 360-degree images, and selling tools to let the customers book hotel rooms and event space. These top European hotels also claim an increase in their revenue after using virtual tours. The hotels are also working with professionals to sync all virtual tours and 3d images to connect them in a worldwide marketplace.

On Search Engines

According to Michal Hubschmann, hotel virtual tour increases not only hotel bookings and sales, but also in search engine rankings and marketing plans. As more and more customers spend more time and engagements in your virtual tours, it also reportedly increase exposure and rankings in Google’s search engine. The technology also generates reports to search engines compared to easier and faster compared to waiting to index a listing.

Hubschmann further reveals most hotels enjoy an astounding 50% increase in views than using regular, static images. Hotel virtual tour also helps upsell most hotel's deluxe rooms and suites. They create virtual tours to showcase the difference between standard and deluxe rooms after booking. It results in most customers making another booking for their top luxurious rooms to enjoy the experience.

The WOW Effect

Meanwhile, GCH's digital marketing consultant, Daniel Wishnia, says hotel virtual tour's success lies in giving the WOW effect to customers. It offers huge incentives to hospitality businesses as guests get to book directly to their rooms compared to collaborating with Online Travel Agency (OTA).

This is important since most hotels have to pay up to 30% to OTA as their booking agent for tour packages. Not only the hotel virtual tour helps in boosting their sales, but it also helps curb their expenses too. They can now spend this money in other crucial areas in the hospitality business. So if you haven’t already, start incorporating your business with hotel virtual tour now and boost your booking sales in no time!

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Experts Reveal How Virtual Tour Restaurant Boosts Your Sales!
BlogDecember 9, 2019

Experts Reveal How Virtual Tour Restaurant Boosts Your Sales!

Are you struggling in promoting your restaurant? Do you have a hard time increasing your reservation bookings and sales? It might be because you’re not incorporating a virtual tour restaurant in your business.

This technology enables you to highlight the stunning features in your restaurant to entice customers into dining in your establishment. How can you utilize virtual tour restaurant features to boost your sales? Learn from the experts and make sure to apply these tips.

How Virtual Tour Restaurant Boosts Your Sales

Get People Talking About Your Restaurant

Nowadays, the restaurant business is booming thanks to the exotic themes they put into their establishment. Does the sound of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Marvel, Dog, or Cat restaurant themes excite you? How about taking an exclusive peek to these restaurants? It’s exhilarating, right?

virtual tour restaurant
Does the sound of Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Marvel, Dog, or Cat restaurant themes excite you?

Virtual tours can help build anticipation and excitement to your customers by showcasing these features to them. It won’t make them stop talking about your restaurant.

The power of word of mouth encourages your customers to invite their friends (a.k.a. referrals) which serve as your free marketing. Not only that, but it also increases your reservations and sales in the process.

Promoting Your Restaurant’s Cozy Ambience

Having a virtual tour restaurant helps businessmen in promoting their dining house's cozy ambiance, beautiful interior design, and vibe. This helps entice the customers who haven't visited your restaurant yet.

According to experts, it invokes the customer's feelings into imagining themselves what it feels like to dine in your restaurant. This incredible sensation urges them to visit your restaurant to have an incredible dining experience.

Pro-Tip

We recommend that you create a virtual tour restaurant showing what it looks like when it's empty as well as when it's full of crowd. Highlight your customer's smiling faces and satisfied feedback as if they're having a blast in your restaurant.

Also, make sure to put a reservation button or contact form on your virtual tour to capture leads and conversions easily.

Helps In Boosting Your Social Media Presence

A virtual tour restaurant not only helps in highlighting your dining house. It also helps in sharing important announcements and progress to your clients. Virtual tour restaurant is especially helpful if your establishment is undergoing:

  • Renovations or setting up new designs and decorations
  • Hosting parties or important events
  • Sharing new exclusive items or products on your menu

After creating these virtual tours, you can share it across your social media channels. Virtual tour restaurant helps in boosting your page views since most online users prefer to see high-quality videos or photos compared to text or low-quality ones.

Every like, comment and shares you invoke from your customers create a buzz that entices people to check out your restaurant.

Pro-Tip

Facebook enables virtual tour embedding on your pages once you reach 2,000 likes. You can get your virtual tour codes here.

Tell Your Story Online

In digital marketing, we always hear the tips on how content is king. You should share a compelling story with your customers to establish a solid connection with them. What better way of telling a story than to make a virtual tour?

Not only you’re sharing your business’ story to them, but you’re also invoking their imaginations. A virtual tour restaurant helps people imagine what kind of stories they can share with their family, friends, or loved ones while dining in your restaurant.

Boost Google My Business Page

A virtual tour restaurant can also be uploaded to your Google My Business Page. It helps provide extra information when your customers search for your restaurant on Google Maps.

Aside from the street view, you can give them a glimpse of your interiors by giving them a 360 virtual tour. The extra time and clicks they spend on your page boost your engine ranking. As you move your way on the top search results, you also get more organic traffic and leads in the process.

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6 Innovative Ways to Make Creative Virtual Tours For Your Real Estate
BlogDecember 5, 2019

6 Innovative Ways to Make Creative Virtual Tours For Your Real Estate

Real estate marketing is all about advertising your brand as an agent and assuring consumer and supplier leads by sharing your listings on social media platforms, promoting your company, and constructing your website content. With these days’ advanced technology, a lot of things have already been made possible. One of which is what we call a virtual tour.

A virtual tour is a model or a simulation of an existing location. It is usually composed of a succession of videos or still images. It may also be incorporated with other multimedia elements such as sound effects, music, narration, and text.

A virtual tour is also one of the best ways to promote your real estate. It gives your clients a perspective of the area without having to go there. Why spend both time and money traveling to the location when you can get a tour even within the comfort of your own home? This strategy will surely impress your clients. However, creating a virtual tour is not an easy task.

Here are tips on how to make a real estate virtual tour:

Virtual Tour Equipment

virtual tour set up
Invest in state-of-the-art cameras, equipment, and technology to create a stunning virtual tour for your real estate property listings.

You need to make sure that the equipment you will be using is of high-quality and in perfect condition; batteries fully charged and empty SD cards are available.

Shooting Time

Checking the weather forecast is a must so that you can schedule the shoot on fair weathered days. Also, the best time of the day to get warm and high-quality images are at sundown.

Tidy Up

If you want to impress your clients, make sure that the area you will be shooting is free from any clutter or unnecessary things. The camera will be shooting the area in 360° so it’s gonna see everything there is to see. The best way to check if the area is all good is to stand at the same spot as the camera and do a 360°. If something is not in place, then it’s time to do a quick sweep.

Furniture Setup

It is important that the perspective of the area is pleasant to the eyes of your clients. Interior design is the key to this. Matching the furniture with the spatial aspect of a room must be well-thought. Consider also the type of decorations to place from one room to another; the color that will enhance the vicinity; and the like.

Also, take note of the positions of mirrors, windows, and anything that’s going to give off a reflection. The camera might capture you in the reflection or even the camera itself; it might also create gleams that could ruin the image so find angles that will prevent this.

Lighting

Since the ideal time to do the shoot is at sundown, interior shoots should be done with the curtains up and the lights on. If there are doors available, open them to allow light from outside to come in. Also, this gives your client a view of the outside from where he/she is standing.

Stay Away

Literally, just stay away from the camera as far as you can. If you can see the camera then it means that the camera can see you, too. Another thing to remember is that even if the camera cannot see you, your shadow might be peeking at the corners. Make sure that this does not happen.

Once you’ve done all these tips, you may check the images to see if it’s a perfect capture or not. If not, you can always take another one, just make sure to correct the error that occurred in the image. If it is, then you deserve a pat on the back. You did a good job of creating your own virtual tour.

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5 Reasons Why You Don’t Want To Miss A 360 Virtual Tour!
BlogDecember 2, 2019

5 Reasons Why You Don’t Want To Miss A 360 Virtual Tour!

The 360 Virtual Tour

The Real Estate market is an ever-changing industry and the demand increases every year. We make use of virtual reality to promote selling properties. We make it an even more realistic experience by offering a 360 virtual tour.

Promoting properties using a 360 virtual tour is one of the latest trends that realtors developed to get them ahead in the game. Various tools are available for realtors to outwit other competitors and draw attention to their properties.

How does a 360 virtual tour help with a real estate deal?

Fine Way to Display

A 360 virtual tour is a great way to showcase the property you are promoting regardless if it’s commercial or residential.

Here you can highlight the rooms and available spaces in the house that the client can explore and navigate by moving to directions they want to see. Most clients explore the different parts of the house like bedrooms and hallways to get an idea of how the real property must look like in reality. Depending on how many floors, the client can freely select the area that piqued their interest.

You can even find additional details on the screen and get the information you need. In most cases, this information holds the exclusive details available in the house like a piece of antique furniture or a rare collection included in the sale.

No Wasted Effort

Realtors get calls all the time from clients and you are no different. This technological advancement would save both parties from unnecessary hassle. Instead of putting an appointment for a home visit for a property that’s far from your area, a 360 virtual tour allows you to find out if the home meets your requirements without going on-site. This saves you more time and avoids the hassle of scheduling a home visit only to find out the property does not meet your standards

People with busy work schedules will appreciate the convenience of this tour.

Not only easy but Cost-effective

Virtual tours give the impression of being costly and it would take a lot of time to create them. Contrary to that assumption, it is easy to make them and saves time. You can use the internet and follow the instructions to create them.

WordPress, for example, allows you to create a virtual tour with an exclusive WPVR plugin.

Take a single panorama image from every room around the house or property that you want your client to see. Upload that image to the plugin. The WPVR will link those images and viola! Now you have a 360 virtual tour that’s readily available for your clients!

More Reliable

360 virtual tour makes you reliable in presenting parts of the property
360 virtual tour help buyers see an entire room

High-quality real-estate images and visuals help leave give an impression to your clients, which you can take advantage of thanks to this technology. Virtual tours give clients a certain image for them to look forward and help them eliminate unnecessary visits to properties they are less likely to admire. On many occasions, clients are becoming meticulous in purchasing both residential and commercial properties. Single images won’t stand a chance in the industry.

Buyers get more inclined to images they can manipulate to see better. Panoramic images help them get the best visual of the actual home.

A new way to Attract Clients

Many realtors remain unaware of this feature since they lack background on virtual tours which is why this is the perfect time to explore and offer the clients an accessible way to view properties. Technological advancement taught people a convenient way to do almost everything at home, especially ones who are from abroad looking for relocation or seeking inquiries on remote property investment. You’ll surely get an extra boost and generate traffic in promoting your social platforms.

Take the challenge of experiencing it first hand. Expand your horizons and use the latest trends in landing more clients. Real Estate agents and investors will surely benefit from a 360 virtual tour.

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Real Estate Virtual Tours Sneak Peak That Will Blow Your Mind!
BlogNovember 28, 2019

Real Estate Virtual Tours Sneak Peak That Will Blow Your Mind!

Virtual Tours Made Possible

Virtual tours bring more opportunities by helping clients find their perfect property and also in growing the businesses of real-estate agents. Homebuyers are also given the chance to see the property without meeting with the agent or visiting the place on-site.

The advancement in real-estate technology we enjoy today provides a convenient way to find our dream home. It allows us to make home visits to potential property easier.

The rise in the demand for properties opened a gateway for the competition from their fellow agents. The good thing about seeking help from an agent is their ability to provide you with a list of properties. Their new listings keep the options open for homebuyers. For a long time, this process is traditionally accepted by the real estate industry.

Evolving Industry

Real Estate Virtual Tours are transforming the real estate market into being more accessible to clients around the world.

3D Virtual Tours are classified into two types: guided and interactive visits.

Guided visits are like the traditional videos promoting the property in a virtual 3D form. The video is made with a 360-degree visual and is convenient for properties that already exist. Here, you won’t need to invest in expensive and sophisticated rendering materials, you only need to buy the Virtual Reality headset for the clients to immerse in the 3D video.

Interactive visits allow the client to be immersed in the program and move freely within the property. Interactive visits are more complicated but favored by the client since it lets them show and experience the property more efficiently.

Real Estate Using VR Technology

Virtual Showcase

Clients like to see as much property as they can for comparison before making a decision. When the property showcases reach too many for both parties to handle, virtual property showcasing turns into a technological miracle. VR helps solve the problem of time-consuming property visits and helps save money.

Imagine a 30-minute to an hour drive to your next home visit reduced to minutes and you can even cover a lot of properties even at a distance. The Real Estate Virtual Tours need the client to wear a VR headset to experience the enveloping experience and have a walk through the properties. VR helps the clients make an initial visit and eliminate those that don’t meet their requirements.

Virtual Staging

Staging needs investment, especially when you are selling newly built properties. A property staged better in virtual reality is better than selling a home with no pieces of furniture. While it’s better to leave minimum decorations when virtual staging, the property needs to show clients carefully-chosen pieces of furniture and decor where clients are still left to fill something for their imagination.

staging is controlled better in virtual tours
A well-crafted virtual staging will draw the attention of clients and easier to sell

When the staging is virtual, you control what the clients see and set an image for the potential property.

Visualizing Architecture

Have you seen a model house? As good it looks, this phase of marketing a property before its construction proved challenging not only to agents but also the developers. Models like to help potential clients see what home or property they can expect and develop. Model houses need well-crafted interior designs to convince clients on purchasing the property.

Virtual tours redefined visualizing architecture by creating a cheaper way of models to properties while still allowing the clients to check the details of the interior and exterior of the properties they are about to build. Real Estate is a serious business not only due to the cost of acquiring such property but also its significance in the personal aspect of the buyers with the purchase.

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