Beyond Maps How Travel Brands Can Use Interactive Digital Experiences to Get Travelers Excited Pre-Trip

Beyond Maps: How Travel Brands Can Use Interactive Digital Experiences to Get Travelers Excited Pre-Trip

Travel is so much more than simply transportation and lodgings. It's the joy of exploring a new location, immersing yourself in a foreign culture, and making amazing experiences. But that sense of adventure typically starts long before you get at your destination. The anticipation and preparation phase is a crucial component of the trip experience.

Travel businesses that tap into that pre-trip enthusiasm and create engaging digital touchpoints may improve passenger engagement and loyalty. According to data from Google, 9 out of 10 tourists utilise internet sources while fantasising about and planning prospective vacations. That creates a great potential for smart travel firms to be creative with technology and turn static, one-way marketing into dynamic, two-way experiences.

From virtual reality tours to social trip planning applications, tourists desire digital experiences that bring their future vacations to life. Read on to discover five ways travel firms can harness interactive digital interaction to create wanderlust and get passengers eager for their next vacation, even before they pack their bags.

Virtual Reality Tours Allow Travelers to Preview Destinations

Virtual reality (VR) technology is revolutionising the way people research and become excited about impending vacations. Travel firms have a unique potential to employ VR to deliver immersive previews of locations - allowing customers to sample hotels, sights, and activities before they go.

VR enables people to go exploring from home with interactive 360 tours. Hotels may display property layouts, room views, on-site facilities, and local attractions utilising VR walkthroughs. This provides guests an accurate glimpse of what to anticipate when they come. Brands like Marriott have experimented with VR Postcards - brief virtual tours that showcase the greatest qualities of various hotel sites.

Destinations themselves may also be previewed utilising VR experiences. Companies like YouVisit allow tourists to digitally experience cities, parks, museums and more with guided VR tours. This helps tourists plan activities and develop enthusiasm before their vacation. Landmarks and attractions may even produce branded VR material to highlight their places.

The challenge for travel businesses is to find the most appealing sensory characteristics of their locations and properties. Then employ VR technology to successfully transform these images, sounds, and sensations into a virtual preview. The more realistic and dynamic the VR material, the better it engages and excites passengers pre-trip.

Augmented Reality Brings Static Photos to Life

Travel brochures and guidebooks are full with great location photographs, but they lack interaction. This is where augmented reality may convert static photos into fascinating, interactive experiences for tourists. By layering digital features over physical brochure photographs, travel marketers may enable passengers to explore places in an altogether new way.

For example, a printed hotel brochure photo may come to life in AR, allowing the potential visitor to click on various portions of the image to see multiple perspectives, receive a 3D tour of the room, explore hotel amenities, and more. This makes finding the appropriate hotel accommodation more obvious and thrilling. AR also allows travel marketers to bring ordinarily dead monuments and sites to life. A guidebook photo of a historical location might contain overlayed AR features that give historical information, audio commentary, or even projections of how the site formerly looked. This provides tourists a greater connection to locations before they ever arrive.

By tapping into AR technology, tourism businesses can convert their static promotional photographs into live, breathing interactive experiences. This allows passengers to actively connect with places and lodgings before their trip, getting them enthusiastic to visit in real life. AR previews make trip inspiration more vivid and unforgettable.

Interactive Itineraries Provide a Dynamic Preview

One way travel firms may thrill clients before their trip is by creating interactive digital itineraries that bring their ideas to life. Traditional static itineraries merely give out dates and locations, while interactive versions allow passengers to envision each day of their vacation in a fascinating way.

Digital itineraries can integrate images, videos, maps, and explanations for each location or activity. Travelers may go through day by day to receive a sample of what to anticipate. These itineraries may even be changed in real-time, so if the tourist plans a new trip or switches lodgings, the itinerary instantly adapts.

By converting a basic list of dates and places into a dynamic narrative, interactive itineraries allow passengers an opportunity to immerse themselves in their impending journey. They get a sample of what they'll see and do each day, increasing excitement and anticipation before they travel. Digital itineraries bring the complete journey to life in a manner tourists can return again and again as the trip approaches.

Gamification Turns Planning Into Play

Gamification is a strong tool that travel firms can employ to get travelers excited before their trip. By turning the planning process into a game, businesses may tap into people's intrinsic need for play and friendly competition.

One approach to gamify the experience is through vacation planning quizzes and tournaments. Brands may design interesting quiz games that propose places or activities based on a traveler's replies. For example, answering a set of questions about your hobbies might match you to a specific destination or travel style. Brands might even build a game show-style quiz that makes connecting tourists to vacations exciting and engaging.

Contests and challenges are another method to gamify the planning experience. Travel firms might urge visitors to design their perfect itinerary by adding locations, hotels, excursions, and activities to a digital scratch pad. The best or most imaginative itineraries might earn rewards like airfare discounts, hotel stays, or additional experiences. Brands might also push passengers to see how many places they can collect or check off on an interactive map. Adding gaming aspects fuels the competitive spirit and makes planning feel more gratifying.

Gamification allows travelers a fun, low-pressure method to examine possibilities and narrow down their perfect trip. By tapping into people's playful side, travel marketers may convert the sometimes laborious planning process into an entertaining game that keeps tourists actively engaged.

Social Features Let Travelers Connect Pre-Trip

One way travel businesses may stimulate enthusiasm before a trip is by promoting social interactions between tourists. Adding social aspects into digital experiences like vacation booking sites, brand applications, VR experiences, etc. may enable tourists get to know one other and connect over the impending journey even before travelling.

allowing group travel like family holidays, school excursions, tours, cruises, etc., travel businesses might add social media-style profiles allowing participants to exchange introductions, photographs, hobbies and more before meeting in person. This helps break the ice so group members feel more connected from the outset. Brands may also add in private group messaging so passengers can have discussions happening.

For couples or friends planning a vacation together, travel businesses may allow customers link their accounts and share planning duties like brainstorming activities or building day-by-day plans. Enabling travelers to communicate one other through the app keeps the trip top of mind as they work together to create enthusiasm.

No matter the sort of vacation, adding a social layer allows tourists to develop relationships and share anticipation in the pre-departure period. By creating these social relationships early, travel businesses may make their clients more engaged and thrilled for the impending excursions they've planned.

Personalization Caters to Specific Interests

Today's travelers have various interests and preferences when it comes to creating their ideal trip. Rather than taking a one-size-fits-all strategy, travel firms can embrace customisation to personalise their digital experiences to each individual.

By gathering traveler preferences upfront during account setup or trip planning, companies may create tailored suggestions for activities, food, lodging and more. For example, if a traveler indicates they like hiking, the business can present route ideas near their location.

Travel brands may also track past travel behavior and give suggestions based on previous bookings and itineraries. If a tourist typically stays at boutique hotels, the brand can show comparable boutique alternatives for their forthcoming trip.

Personalized suggestions bring a personal touch to digital interactions. They make passengers feel understood and offer them confidence they’ll have a wonderful experience personalised to their individual interests and inclinations.

Mobile Apps Keep Travel Top of Mind

Travelers are usually on the go, so smartphone applications give quick access and alerts about impending excursions. Brands can consider establishing comprehensive mobile applications to engage passengers and keep interest high leading up to the trip.

Mobile applications allow passengers to obtain important trip data from anywhere. Itineraries, confirmation numbers, travel papers, and other critical facts may be seen on a smartphone at any time. This provides vacationers comfort of mind knowing their plans are at their fingertips.

Apps can assist vacation planning duties including reserving activities, restaurant reservations, and transportation. Travelers may simply schedule events, adjust itineraries, and make payments on the fly directly from their phone. Reducing friction in the planning process promotes momentum and excitement.

Notifications and reminders from a travel app keep the approaching excursion top of mind. Travelers receive timely reminders about topics needing action like completing online check-in or studying travel guides. This function prevents crucial tasks from sliding through the gaps.

A mobile app also provides valuable real estate for travel businesses to cross-sell items and communicate with clients post-booking. Offering benefits like in-app purchases or special promotions gives another entertaining touchpoint throughout the pre-trip period.

Overall, mobile applications allow travel businesses to engage customers regularly in the key lead-up to the trip date. Keeping the trip specifics actively in consumers' minds helps guarantee they arrive eager and prepared for the events ahead.

Live Feeds Offer a Real-Time Glimpse

Today's travelers demand authenticity. They desire real-life, unedited encounters that convey the true sights and sounds of a location. This is where live video feeds come in. By integrating into live feeds, travel businesses may give voyeuristic windows that allow travelers to preview places in real-time.

From hotel beach cameras to city street sights, live feeds let guests sneak peaks into the daily rhythms of a location. Instead of static brochure photographs, guests may virtually people watch in town squares, relax to coastal waves, or experience lively metropolis sights. Live feeds expose tourists to locations in the moment, providing honest local occurrences unfettered by editing.

The visual immediacy and raw authenticity of live feeds is unrivalled in helping people feel connected to locations before arrival. Travel businesses that mix live feeds into digital experiences provide tourists real-time peeks into places that no traditional marketing material can equal. This makes the vacation experience feel more visceral, tactile, and genuine.

The Future is Bright for Travel Tech

As technology continues to progress, the future looks bright for creative travel businesses to attract and delight passengers. The virtual reality tours, augmented reality brochures, interactive itineraries, and gamified planning tools presented are only the beginning.

Travel firms that embrace developing innovation will be able to deliver next-level experiences that let tourists feel genuinely involved in their prospective journeys. The tailored recommendations, mobile convenience, live views, and social connections highlighted here emphasise crucial components that might captivate passengers during pre-trip preparation.

Looking ahead, travel businesses have a potential to push the limits even farther. Virtual reality might grow increasingly more lifelike and immersive. Augmented and mixed reality may allow passengers to picture themselves immediately into destination locations. Artificial intelligence might offer super-personalized recommendations and predictive travel management.

As technology advances, so will visitors' expectations for digital experiences that thrill, inspire and immerse them in their planned journeys. Travel firms who lean into innovation and utilise new tech capabilities will continue leading the way in redefining travel from start to end. The future looks bright for companies eager to reinvent the pre-trip preparation experience.