If you’re really into your fitness, and you’ve got a strict regime that you follow religiously all year round, you’re not going to let a holiday come in-between you and your workout. However, the issue here is that a big part of your strict regime is the gym that you attend. You know the staff like family, you’re comfortable with the equipment and there’s plenty of room for you to get your workout completed. Most gym buffs will do extensive research on the gyms that they’ll have access to on holiday before they depart, and often the standard of gym can have a big impact on where they decide to spend their holiday (especially if they’re away for a significant period of time). Despite this, often all that we have to judge these gyms on is a few hastily put together pictures which don’t truly help us to get an idea of the size or equipment that you’ll have access to.
The rise of VR tours in the holiday rental industry is threatening to put an end to this nonsense once and for all. Instead of relying on amateur photos and misleading descriptions, gym buffs will now be able to take a VR tour of the gym and inspect the area for themselves, helping them to decide whether or not the gym will be sufficient for their workout needs. Holiday rental properties not providing a VR tour of their gym will immediately be putting themselves at a disadvantage compared to those who are, especially considering that almost everyone is a ‘gym-goer’ in some form these days.
Strangely, it seems to be mainly the smaller holiday rental properties who are adopting VR tours the fastest at the moment, probably because many of the larger holiday rental properties are actually reluctant to show their gym to potential visitors. It’s much easier to edit an image than it is to edit a VR tour, and it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that many of these holiday properties intentionally upload vague images of their gyms to try and create the illusion of space. VR tours of gyms will hopefully help to put an end to this deception.
This is great news for the smaller properties, who now have a way to easily distinguish themselves from their larger competitors and capitalize on the growing trend of ‘holiday workouts’. Consequently, these smaller properties may be able to charge more for use of their gym.
The days of turning up with your gym kit at a holiday property only to find an old treadmill and a dusty bench are hopefully ending. With VR tours, you’ll know exactly what the gym will look like, and whether or not it will suffice.
Better yet, these holiday rental properties could even record workouts and sessions within VR for their visitors to follow along to once they’ve arrived at the property. This would give gym buffs even more incentive to visit their property, as they’d know beforehand that the gym has sufficient room to carry out these workout sessions. The owners of the rental property could even give visitors the chance to record their own sessions with VR and upload them to the website for other visitors to look at. Having this kind of real footage would really help to give other potential customers a great idea of what the gym facilities were like. Any time that a website features user submitted content like this, it builds huge trust and shows other potential customers that there is nothing to hide.
Lastly, we’ve seen examples of holiday rental properties filming VR tours of the city or town that they’re located in, then uploading the video to a fitness bike with VR capabilities. Imagine a visitor being able to get a good idea of the area that they’re spending their holiday in simply by hopping on the exercise bike, helping them to decide which areas they like the look of. The possibilities of VR for the holiday rental industry seem endless!
Max Robinson, Supercontrol Online Booking
