In today’s fast-paced world, travelers love the ease of searching and booking tours on the go. So, if you want to catch a travelers attention in a sea of widely varying travel applications, AR-based travel apps can come in handy by offering a unique competitive advantage.
Instead of replacing the real world elements like Virtual Reality does, AR overlays digital components over real ones to render a rich and visually appealing experience of the existing places.
The role of AR in travel apps has infinite possibilities. It has immense potential to assist and bring innovative changes to the travel and tourism industry.
Role of AR in Travel apps
Basically what AR really does is, it alters and enhances people’s perceptions of their physical surroundings when seen through a particular device.
AR is highly beneficial for travel app development and it is emerging as a useful tool for businesses and marketers. It allows them to transform the way customers observe their surroundings. AR-based travel apps quickly engage customers with its interactivity and render an immersive user experience.
According to a latest report, by 2021, there will be an estimated 1.96 billion mobile AR users worldwide. And by 2023, the number is estimated to grow to 2.4 billion mobile AR users worldwide.
Types of AR Travel Applications
If you have been wondering how to integrate AR in travel apps, you can do it in one of the following ways:
- Location-based
AR apps that track locations are termed as location-or position-based applications. Location-based apps rely mostly on GPS, accelerometer or digital compass data.
Pokemon Go uses GPS data to determine the user’s location and decides whether or not to show him a Pokemon.
- Marker-based
Marker-based AR technology has diverse applications. Marker-based AR or recognition based AR provides us detailed information about the object, after performing object recognition. It senses the object in front of the camera and offers on-screen information.
Markers may be codes, physical objects or printed images. Marker-based AR technology is most commonly used in various types of AR travel applications.
- SLAM
Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) software easily identifies objects around the user. SLAM technology makes use of complex algorithms to identify colors, patterns and other characteristics of physical objects.
SLAM technology is the most modern one and involves smooth-running high-end hardware.
Scope of Augmented Reality in Travel and Tourism Industry
Travel and tourism is an extensive sector, entailing aspects such as hospitality, accommodation, tourist destinations, transportation and local transit. While AR technology is relatively new in the mobile app development domain, the role of augmented reality apps in tourism and travel apps is ever growing.
The future of augmented reality in tourism looks bright and it has immense potential to transform each one of these aspects. The innovative use cases of augmented reality travel and tourism are emerging every now and then and here are certain examples of how augmented reality can be used in travel app development.
1. Hotels and Accommodations
Augmented Reality services offer Hotels and accommodations boundless potential to engage interactively with guests and travelers. It empowers businesses to provide information to potential customers in an immersive manner, with 360-degree visual tours and display of 3D views.
Providing information in an interactive manner can increase demand for bookings as customers feel more confident about the property.
2. Augmented Tourist Destinations
Another implication of augmented reality in tourism is interactive tours of tourist destinations and landmarks. AR-based apps can facilitate augmented tours of ancient locations, buildings, landmarks and enable users to know more about them. Just pointing the app towards a building or landmark can present a visual of the entire history and events that happened there, thereby offering an amazing experience to the travelers and helping them learn and explore more, in real-time.
3. Immersive Navigation
Augmented Reality travel apps ensure that travelers never get lost in a foreign city or in a remote location regardless of the language barriers. Instead of asking for directions, visitors can use AR-based navigation apps to easily reach their destinations. The features of travel apps features such as arrows and pointers make it easy to follow instructions. Additionally, such apps combine the device camera with Google Maps to provide immersive navigation and make the experiences even better.
4. Local Transit
AR is significantly improving local transit. Even in foreign locations things become so much more easy and secure with AR based travel apps, that provide interactive map views of roads, traffic, destinations and best places to travel in the city. Besides using such apps when traveling by cabs, tourists can also use them when traveling by public transportation.
5. AR for Museums
All thanks to augmented reality opening up newer avenues, museums are no longer a boring place. Through AR travelers can easily learn how different technical devices worked, how prehistoric animals looked and explore more about how masterpieces were created in an engaging manner.
Conclusion
The importance of augmented reality in the travel industry can’t be stressed enough. The potential of AR is enormous to the point that it can help you unravel completely new business opportunities. Travel industry is usually selling experiences and AR not only solves an array of pain points but also provides an enhanced travel experience.
As a leading enterprise business intelligence company, we suggest integrating AR in your travel app solutions. It can take your business to the next level.