Monday Mashups: Virtual Venue Site Visits

With better technology, meeting and event venues are now offering informative and interactive virtual tours for planners. These virtual tours cover all areas, from the front door to the meeting space and everything in between, captured via a 360-degree camera rig atop a remote-control rover. Venue sales managers are able to virtually walk planners through an entire hotel or convention center just by sharing their computer screens. It helps event planners visualize the flow from floor to floor and meeting room to meeting room while saving them the trip out to the venue.

Making a Virtual Impression
Thanks to virtual-reality technology and 360-degree photography, hotels and convention centers are finding ways to immerse event planners in a space—without them ever setting foot in the building. BizBash has found that some hotels offer a virtual tour app from technology company YouVisit that is available in four languages and can be used on a laptop or a phone.

Not only is the app on trend but it also solves a problem: Unlike a photo gallery, it conveys that even though a hotel may be a block from the beach, rooms still boast gorgeous ocean views. Beyond being informative, interactive virtual tours can make a big impression on prospective planners too.

Saving Planners Time
Obviously, for event planners located in another city, interactive virtual tours are incredibly helpful. A venue's prospective clients from all over the world can hop on a virtual tour as soon as possible and see the space. They are able to zoom into the finer details and see everything the space has to offer.

Virtual tours are also a powerful tool after an event is on the books. It can help planners create custom space layouts for their events. Using an app powered by SketchUp, planners can receive an interactive floor plan so they’re able to walk around on their own time and assess the venue.

Working Around the Limitations
Depiction of views and missing out on the sights, sounds and smells you get while walking through a venue can be a limitation. Hotels and convention centers are working around that by providing a video to accompany the virtual tour and by sending a shipment of kitchen goodies to the prospective client. Another way to immerse planners!

Next time you need to go on a site visit, make it virtual and devour the details of a walk-through from the comforts of your own home or office! We can't wait to see what other advanced technology venues add to make the planning process even easier.