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Increasingly, consumers expect their travel experiences to include the latest and greatest technologies that they experience in their daily lives. This is driving increased investment from hospitality (esp. hotelier) CIO's in digital customer engagement. Top technologies include virtual/augmented reality for consumers as training of employees; voice activation in hotel rooms and common areas as well as for coaching staff; mobile apps for booking, check-ins/check-outs, IRD orders, and front-desk communications, as well as back-end management of labor, inventory, and customer relations; RFID asset tracking; interactive displays; and robotics. All of these trends culminate in Innovation Incubator hotels like M Beta at Charlotte Marriott City Center where technologies are rapidly prototyped and guest feedback is provided in real-time to help drive decisions about which technologies represent the greatest value to cutting-edge hoteliers through guest engagement.

This article deals with virtual reality and how it is impacting the future of the steel coaster. "While VR product development and integration strategies are still in the early stages, as it currently stands, VR is identified as a key role player and complementary technology for further consideration in the roller coaster industry going forward." "With leisure experiences such as amusement and theme parks attracting both domestic and international tourists, and tourists being a highly sought-after commodity capable of turning almost any tourism destination and its attractions into thriving exports (Louw, 2017)" "Furthermore, the US attractions industry grew at nearly twice the rate of the overall US economy and over a timeframe of seven years (2004 - 2011), the impact of attractions grew 50%, with an average growth rate of 6% per annum (Oxford Economics, 2013)" 'This implies that there is not much of a new experience on offer for visitors who have already mustered the courage to conquer these rides which may prove to be cumbersome for park management as far as visitor attendance is concerned and, especially, as far as attracting return visitors is concerned. " "Google Trends indicates a steady increase for the search term "Virtual Reality" over the past 5 years, with a notable spike occurring during 2016 (Google Trends, n.d.)" "With the introduction of VR, however, existing roller coasters and their infrastructure can be revitalised at a fraction of the cost of a complete rebuild by introducing a digital experience overlay (Louw, 2017a:135)" "Naturally, future work could include gaining a better understanding of how VR additions to existing roller coasters affect park visitor numbers with prior studies having indicated positive results of introducing new attractions lasting up to 2 years (Cornelis, 2010)."

Looks at a VR Company using VR to allow potential guests to explore the hotel in a VR environment. The potential guest can then actually make a booking within the VR environment. Opportunity for hotels to differentiate their hotel for a generation of potential guests who have grown up in a VR enabled world.

Interesting article that explains how VR is currently being used by large branded hotels like Marriot. Using VR as a key to present as a selling points separates those hotels from their competitors. The fact of being able to present conference space to conference planners is another tool to help close business.

As an example of VR use for sustainable tourism, on October 16, the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida debuted the first of its kind, full-motion, 360-degree, interactive VR experience of the Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru exhibition. In order to preserve this historic site, less than one million visitors are allowed in each year. On-site use of VR tech for a synchronous guest experience is also being explored and has the potential to be disruptive to use of tour guides. Plus, VR technology provides such rich immersive travel experiences that traditional marketing tools like pictures or standard print ads cannot match.

They can work together. Based on this article, this can be beneficial for all industries.

Robotics, virtual reality, and augmented reality can work together to create cutting-edge solutions for diverse businesses. Businesses use robots to increase efficiency while also ensuring employee safety in potentially dangerous situations. Virtual reality and augmented reality, two contemporary technologies, have provided an immersive platform for media and gaming. People can explore strange environments both indoors and outdoors with the aid of AR and VR. The "Three Amigos" can be augmented reality, robotics, and virtual reality when they work together. Robot control using immersive technologies like VR and AR is possible. Business executives need to be aware of the potential benefits of combining virtual reality, robots, and augmented reality. Robots can be programmed to do a variety of jobs using virtual reality and augmented reality. There are two different kinds of neural networks: imitation networks, which attempt to comprehend demonstrations and examine how actions are executed, and visual networks, which use images taken by the robot's camera to understand the current state of an object. Dual neural networks can be used by organizations to enable robots to learn new tasks by monitoring and dissecting several behaviors. Robots that use artificial intelligence (AI) are exposed to a wide variety of data, which helps them learn how to distinguish between distinct objects, group related objects together, and recognize new objects that resemble what they have already seen. The expense and effort needed to gather data and real-world items can be reduced by trainers and developers. Robots can also be taught to recognize certain biological structures in the human body using 3D models. Virtual reality can be utilized to construct teleoperating robots that can function with the help of many sensor displays by employing hand controllers. The homunculus concept of the human brain, which postulates that there is a miniature human inside the brain that controls movement

The article discuss different usages of virtual reality in hotels, and how it has benefited hotels by increasing the number of hotel bookings and level of satisfaction.

In Today's Society digital is the new engineer and operational tasks in regard to how we book flights before touring, interactive experiences through the media, and memorable expressions. The hospitality and travel industry has realized the potential of Virtual Reality to attracts incoming guests and increase bookings rates.

Here is a very informative and interesting blog on how Hospitality Tech can be upscaled with AR.