The business opportunities for tourism in the metaverse

Metaverse is becoming very popular also thanks to Mark Zuckember’s video announcing Meta-Facebook; we define it as virtual 3d Worlds augmented with contents and experiences. 

What opportunities for the Travel&Tourism industry that is based on real experience? For sure, the virtual experience will never substitute the real one, but there are many aspects that tourist destinations, tour operators, hotels as well as tour and activities providers can consider. We will develop this story around the tourist destinations, however a little effort in creativity will make it possible to adapt this solution to multiple tourist enterprises.

Destinations can buy a land, a portion of the virtual space, and reproduce part of the territory in dimension 3D with the objective of replicating the environment or the mood that is able to attract the tourist-customer. As reported by Euronews, the City of Seoul will implement a 5 years plan and enter in the metaverse by 2023.
A tourist can virtually discover the destination by visiting places, landscapes or museums or by riding a scooter, sailing a boat or through interactive experiences such as fishing, a cooking class or a yoga lesson in the nature or in an historical venue.

It’s a big opportunity to gather, nurture, build loyalty and develop the community and, why not?, to attract new visitors.
Like in the real life, it will be possible to build shops in order to enhance the e-commerce experience, allowing more monetization opportunities.
Some experiences could only be offered in virtual mode and the most attractive ones could be on demand, especially the most relevant for those users who will not be able to reach the destination or who want to re-live a memorable holiday.
Virtual events, with different levels of hybridization, will offer new income streams, especially if relevant and unique.
Finally, the destination can rent or sell part of the land and, like in real life, get revenues also linked to NFT, namely non-fungible token, digital assets linked to the blockchain. 

At Twissen we observed that there are already giant investments in the metaverse and that this technology will be disrupting very soon. Destinations, and other tourist players, will be ready both to build loyalty and to attract new customers, offering experience without limits of time and space to a high number of users. Who comes first, will get the best results.  

Francesco Redi

President and founder at Twissen. Manager in Local Development, Tourism Policies,  EU Funds. He cooperates with several European universities, public bodies, development agencies, DMOs and enterprises.