Pune Start-up launches one of World's First Hotel Booking portal using 360 degree/Virtual Reality Technology.

2024-11-06 11:22:17 Lifestyle

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Hotel stay is one of the key components to make your travel easy and memorable. Online bookings though offers a convenient way of booking hotels, has its share of issues for customers. Fake photos, misleading and professionally modified to make it look good photos, hyped/rigged ratings and reviews are few to mention. The traveler also goes through the challenge of searching through a list of 100s of hotels for a destination and wastes lot of time in trying to find the best hotel within budget, Good ratings, at a good location with good amenities. He does so by going through multiple sites and checking travelers photos, reviews etc.

Online hotel booking can become a tedious task when one is travelling with friends and family.

MyVRooms.com, a virtual reality start-up by this couple from Pune, Jitesh and Soniya Khurkhuriya, strives to solve this problem. It has come up with the most innovative way of booking a hotel using virtual reality. It brings the best of online hotel booking and 360 degree-virtual reality together. It not only provides the list of the "Most Bookable" hotels and resorts but also provides a complete transparency by showing 360 degree views of the entire hotel including the room type where you are going to stay.

"Using a 360 degree and virtual reality, customers can view all the hotel amenities, rooms and facilities quickly.", said Soniya Khurkhuriya, Founder of MyVRooms. "People like to feel comfortable while booking a hotel and the 360 degree view of the hotel provides them the confidence to book the hotel." she adds.

"It further helps the customer in taking the decision during the buying process and saves lot of time." says Jitesh, "Customers can visualize their presence at the hotel which brings lot more personalization compared to reading about the amenities through a list and description."

Research has proven that almost 3/4th of the customers visit multiple sites before they book the hotel. The 360 degree tour will definitely help the customers in getting to know the hotel very quickly and also feel assured of what they will expect when they arrive at the hotel. This surely provides a clear and complete information of the hotel and helps in bringing in much needed transparency.

MyVRooms.com a unique hotel booking portal and probably the first of its kind in the world in the hotel booking segment.

Research has proven that online viewers are 115% more likely to book a hotel with 360 degree interactive tours. It has the potential to increase the online bookings by 85%.

"With the advent of online hotel booking, Online review systems and ecommerce, it is very easy to book a hotel online. However, some nuances have also sneaked in with the growth of online hotel booking." said Jitesh, "TripAdvisor ratings are being manipulated by some hotels. Also, many times, the pictures need not necessarily be fake but misleading, hiding some important details. With a good photographer even a pond can be made to look an olympic size swimming pool. At MyVRooms, our aim is to provide a complete transparency and winning the trust of our customers is the key".

One of the important features that will definitely help a business traveler is 'I Want To Stay Near'. Most of the sites provide hotel filters by area. However, a traveler who is not familiar with the location and if the area size is large such as a Metro Suburb, he or she may end up staying very far. This feature uses Google address bar and the traveler can provide an input such as conference venue, client office address etc and the system provides hotels with distance from that place. With only the best hotels being listed with 360 degree view, the customer can be assured of his comfortable stay nearby.

Launched on 11th October, MyVRooms.com has roped in 20 hotels from Pune, Mahabaleshwar and Lonavala to begin with. They will be continuously adding more hotels from these cities as well as from Goa and Mumbai. When asked about how MyVRooms approaches and lists a hotel, Jitesh explained, "The process of adding a hotel is very rigorous. We first apply all those filters that a customer would typically apply while booking his hotel. We then go through the reviews and ratings of each and every hotel on various sites and rank them ourselves. The selection criteria involves budget, location, ratings, reviews, site visits and lot more before a decision is made to list the hotel."

"Team then visits with specialized equipments to take 360 degree pictures. They are processed to make web and mobile friendly and finally goes with the listing. We also show every room type with its 360 degree picture so that the customer knows what he is booking."

The start-up wants to remain focused on its key differentiator of transparency and has tied up with various OTAs for getting the best deal for its customers. That will truly be getting the best of both, technology and business deals.

There is a lot more that team MyVRooms plans to provide in the travel segment using virtual reality. Keeping our fingers crossed.

Reference sites for some statements made,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3276617/Disturbing-proof-online-review-book-holiday-FAKE-Investigation-reveals-entire-industry-dedicated-generating-bogus-appraisals-cash.html

https://www.oyster.com/hotels/photo-fakeouts/