The emerging metaverse is revolutionizing industries, including real estate, tourism, and architecture. Virtual tours are transforming how real estate developers showcase properties, providing potential buyers with immersive experiences before visiting the physical location.
In the tourism sector, metaverse technology is enhancing customer experiences by enabling virtual visits to resorts and hotels, and augmenting city tours with rich, contextual information.
The realm of architecture is also benefitting from this digital shift, with metaverse technology facilitating visualization of finished buildings before construction, and even enabling the exploration of architecturally impossible structures.
Real Estate
Virtual tours of real estate offerings would offer developers the possibility to showcase buildings before the first stone is laid and would offer buyers to get a decent first impression before having to go to the physical location, saving time and effort for both sellers and buyers.
We have already seen real estate agents offer 360° walkthroughs of buildings on platforms such as Zillow or German ImmobilienScout24. As VR headsets become more commonplace, sellers have stronger incentives to create these, so only the most promising buyers book on-premise tours.
Matterport, a company from Sunnyvale, California, is developing a technology called “Digital Twins,” which is already used by Fortune 500 companies, such as WeWork and Waldorf Astoria. The company claims its special VR cameras are able to transport actual buildings into virtual reality.
Tourism
Ever booked a resort or a hotel, and the actual accommodation was not at all how it looked in the pictures? Metaverse tourism offers a way for potential customers to get a taste of the experience before booking.
Even when guests have arrived, resorts or tour operators could use augmented reality to radically transform their guests’ experience by going on a tour or a ride. City tours could display a plethora of information on AR headsets, while the tour guide explains the most salient points.
Full metaverse tourism, where travel only takes place in virtual worlds, seems further out, as extended immersion is not a pleasant experience for most users. We expect virtual theme parks to offer short, intense and rapidly evolving experiences to adventurous users however.
“The Flyover Zone” already allows users to experience virtual flyovers of cultural heritage sites worldwide.
Finance
The metaverse will come fully into its own once it starts to enable commerce of digital and maybe also non-digital items. Finance will play a large role in enabling payments and securing marketplaces, but it has to compete with or build upon blockchain technology to succeed. We’ve seen HSBC, JPMorgan and Interbank move into this space tentatively for now.
Architecture
Seeing a finished house before its construction is complete in location and in as much detail as possible is a dream come true for architects, home builders and developers alike. Metaverse technology would enable much tighter feedback loops between architects and their customers and lead to greater satisfaction.
Apart from making potential real buildings visible, the metaverse can allow physically impossible architectural feats to be experienced. Game developers are already dreaming up whole worlds.
In conclusion, the integration of metaverse technology into the fields of real estate, tourism, and architecture is ushering in a new era of innovation. The ability to virtually tour properties and destinations before committing to them is reshaping customer expectations and experiences. Similarly, architects can now offer clients a glimpse into the future, showcasing finished constructions before they’ve even broken ground. As this technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see even more extraordinary advancements and opportunities in these sectors.
