Tourism and 360° media
The use of virtual tours and 360° imagery in destination marketing and guest communication.
Travel decisions increasingly happen online — and on the strength of images. 360° content picks up where photographs stop: it shows how a place fits together rather than isolated fragments, and lets guests decide where to look.
The common worry that virtual visits replace real ones has not been borne out. In practice tours tend to work like a preview: people who have seen a place beforehand can plan their visit more concretely.
For destinations a second benefit arises. Captures of town centres, hiking trails and landmarks are marketing material and documentation at once — and via Google Maps they are visible exactly where trip planning begins.