Yerba Buena VR (YBVR) is working on creating a tourist experience through immersive video technology that allows users to teleport to various locations using VR headsets. In collaboration with Toledo Monumental (https://toledomonumental.com/), a tourist offering in the city of Toledo that provides access to various historical monuments, YBVR has developed a multi-device application with different immersive content.
What does this App have?
In Toledo Monumental VR, those unfamiliar with these monuments can explore them in the digital world through videos included in the App, accessible on mobile devices, tablets, and Meta Quest headsets. The most impactful experience is from the headsets, providing the sensation of being physically teleported to the location shown in the video.
This offers a novel opportunity for those unable to travel for different reasons (health, visas, travel impossibility, lack of time, etc.). It also allows them to explore travel possibilities, make more selective plans, and be captivated by the charms of the city of Toledo. For those who have already visited the city, it provides the opportunity to relive their experiences and share them with friends and family.
The application is in the experimental phase, with all content being free. The goal is to gradually introduce premium paid content with the idea of developing a new revenue stream to contribute to the maintenance and conservation of monumental heritage. This is particularly interesting for small, difficult-to-reach, or scattered rural areas lacking sufficient visitor flow to cover conservation expenses.
YBVR’s technology ensures the visual experience is of the highest quality, using streaming with minimal bandwidth for content downloading and employing techniques for instant camera changes in multi-camera experiences. This technology allows for a dynamic, immersive, interactive, and personalized experience.
Touristic Metaverse
On the other hand, YBVR is developing a prototype of a touristic metaverse as part of the immersive Metatour project, funded by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function. This development will include the tourist experience from virtual and mixed reality glasses, featuring avatars, synchronized group visualizations sharing the virtual visit remotely, the ability to zoom in on images, or take a selfie in front of a monument. It will also include small games and interactive experiences.
Applying the metaverse concept to tourism would provide access to a gallery of destinations and experiences where users, with their digital presence embodied in their avatars, can select, interact, or share. A likely use case could be a group of friends from different parts of the world virtually visiting a specific monument together, synchronized for all users in the group, where they can share their impressions verbally through an audio conference and convey gestures and non-verbal language through their avatars.
The Future of Digital Tourism
YBVR is betting on the development of digital tourism with the possibilities of the latest available technology, aiming to benefit tourist destinations by promoting and disseminating them, reducing mass tourism in favor of a selective and informed visitor, and developing new revenue streams that reach the destinations themselves to support the conservation and maintenance of natural and heritage sites.
