2024. 7. 9. 09:29ㆍ카테고리 없음
Let’s imagine the traveler who is only planning a vacation. Before going on a journey, the traveler needs to find out transport routes and timetables, places to stay, local attractions, entertainments, and food.
There is a large amount of reference information for tourists. It is remarkably difficult to distinguish your business from other travel companies publishing tons of marketing texts, photos, animations, and videos.
How do you make the traveler pay attention to you? The augmented reality application can come in handy to highlight your competitive advantages.
With the help of the AR app, you can display useful information in an intuitive, user-friendly interface. Augmented reality in travel is an ideal tool for storytelling, which combines informative content and entertainment.
Augmente
d reality travel app quickly engages customers with its interactivity and provides a unique user experience.
People travel because they live exciting experiences. This wish for novelty can be used by travel businesses, who can provide customers with adventure activities and offer them new engaging ways to discover the world using augmented reality.
Pokemon Go shows an example of how you can use modern digital technologies to make travel experience even better.
Pokemon Go became the first mass-popular augmented reality game. But instead of an isolated game at home, this AR application brought players out into the street and made them move and travel a lot.
Thanks to the commercial success of Pokemon Go, it became clear that the market is ready for the mass use of augmented reality.
How does AR technology work?
First, the augmented reality (AR) application captures the image of the surrounding environment. In the Pokemon Go, as well as in most AR applications for a mass user, it is made with the built-in camera of a smartphone or tablet.
The AR application scans the captured image to determine where it should be overlaid with the AR objects. Following that, the app sends a request to the database for obtaining proper information.
In the end, the augmented reality application gathers a comprehensive picture using a captured image of the environment around you and additional information.
For the user, all these processes in the augmented reality applications occur in the blink of an eye. When you play Pokemon Go and find yourself in the Pokemon’s habitat, it instantly appears on the screen. In addition, if you go to another place without catching the Pokemon, it will disappear from your screen.
Moreover, in many augmented reality applications, you can interact with objects. So, you don’t only watch the Pokemon, but catch
it. Interactivity is particularly essential for creating a fascinating effect on the augmented reality travel app.
Types of augmented reality applications
Different approaches are used for analyzing the environment in AR applications. Let’s look at some of them.
1. Location-based
AR applications that track locations are called location- or position-based. Location-based apps usually rely on GPS, accelerometer or digital compass data.
Pokemon Go uses GPS data to find out the location of the user and determine whether to show him a Pokemon or not.
The location-based augmented reality approach is suitable for creating city tours or navigation apps.
2. Marker-based
Marker-based AR apps respond to specific predefined triggers. Markers can be codes, printed images or physical objects.
At the moment, marker-based AR technology is the most widespread in different types of AR travel applications.
For instance, Thomas Cook travel company with the marker-based AR app provides digital content in addition to printed materials. And, Jinsha Site Museum in China uses marker-based augmented reality technology to animate artifacts and recreate ancientries.
3. SLAM
Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology recognize objects around the user. SLAM technology uses complex algorithms to identify colors, patterns or other features of physical objects.
SLAM technology is the most advanced and requires high-end hardware to run smoothly. Therefore, most augmented reality developers create location-based or marker-based AR travel apps.
What are the use cases of AR in the travel industry?
Let’s look at how a traveler can get more benefits from the journey by using various possibilities of augmented reality.
AR for travel guides
The interactive AR travel guide can immediately provide up-to-date background information in a convenient form, show the three-dimensional sights or interactive videos.
An example of AR travel guide is the AR City app. Now, this AR app provides the enhanced map content for more than 300 cities. Additional information includes street and building names, relevant points of interest.
AR City also provides a traveler with augmented reality navigation hints. Thus, the traveler gets all the necessary information in one augmented reality travel application
Augmented reality for hotels
The use of augmented reality in the hotel business is impressive with its diversity.
Travelers can use an augmented reality hotel guide when they’re looking for a hotel to stay in. For example, Thomas Cook travel company advertises Sentido hotels with such interactive AR-based tours. With the mobile AR app, customers can receive extra content by scanning printed or online images in Thomas Cook’s brochures.
In order not to get lost in a large hotel, travelers can use the navigation AR application to find a dining room, a swimming pool, a spa or an entertainment area.
A traveler will always get entertained in the augmented hotel environment. Below we can see the example at the Holiday Inn that created an AR hotel experience for visitors. With the AR app, visitors can watch funny, realistic pictures of celebrities in the hotel rooms.
In addition, when tourists get bored with watching celebrities, they can take advantage of the interactive AR map of the neighborhood to find out what places are worth visiting. The Hub Hotel in the United Kingdom provides this opportunity, using the AR app to animate maps on the walls of its hotel rooms.
AR for city tours
A considerable advantage of augmented reality is that it is capable of enhancing or changing the view of the surrounding world. With the AR apps, tourists can not only learn more and view the existing architectural objects in detail but also make time travel.
Augmented reality applications can show how the area looked in the past, restore historical events or vice versa, transfer the traveler to the future demonstrating buildings that are only planned today.
For example, the augmented reality travel app Paris, Then and Now Guide, transfers a traveler to Paris of the 20th century providing a unique experience and unforgettable impressions.
