Virtual Reality and Travel: Real-World Business Applications

Imagine spending the morning in the Maldives brainstorming with colleagues, before touring Silicon Valley conference venues in the afternoon – all without leaving your office. Virtual reality in travel opens the doors to collective spaces without physical constraints, and it’s a market poised for substantial growth.

The impact could be considerable. According to McKinsey estimates, the potential value of VR and the metaverse in travel will surpass $20 billion by 2030, driven by virtual conferences and events, immersive site visits and targeted advertising capabilities. 

Of course, a VR trip can never replace the connection of in-person business travel. But as a tool for discovery and collaboration, this technology’s benefits are still unfolding. Below, we’ll explore how business travel with virtual reality can create fresh opportunities for your company, while cutting costs and impacting ROI in a positive way. 

Applications of VR technology in business travel

Virtual reality travel experiences can already take you to real-world destinations or immerse you in a novel environment, which makes their possibilities endless. In the future, businesses could use VR to supplement event planning, employee training, and travel management strategies. 

Business travel planning 

One of the first ways that VR trips can make a real difference is by providing inspiration for business trip itineraries and assisting with decision-making. 

Today, virtual spaces are used to showcase aspects of travel, whether it’s a specific landmark or a carrier’s different airline classes.

For example, you can tour the city of Los Angeles with Xplorit, exploring various districts, attractions, and conference venues to get a feel for the best places to visit and stay during a business trip. Points of interest are layered over Google Maps, with more information provided when you click through.

Similarly, the South Korean metaverse app ZEPETO was developed by the Korea Tourism Organisation to provide detailed, immersive tours. When you sign up, you can create a personal avatar to interact with others and travel virtually around South Korea to make itinerary creation more efficient. 

Tools like these are already being used to give a greater awareness of any unfamiliar locations, but we can expect to see them more widely available in the near future. 

Through interactions with virtual travel agents and guided airport tours, business travellers will know what to expect at the destination. They can scout out business facilities in airports to save time, take a virtual walk to client offices, and learn more about cultural differences with a realistic, immersive experience. 

Virtual site inspections

When selecting the best business travel hotel, you already use hotel websites and platforms like Booking.com for Business to view detailed photos, videos, and amenities. Yet if you want an even more immersive experience, you can now virtually tour many hotels before making your final decision. One example is CitizenM, which has purchased land in the metaverse world The Sandbox where virtual visitors can explore digital properties. 

But beyond hotels, one emerging application of VR for travel that really holds value for businesses is the ability to tour meeting spaces and event venues. When you’re planning an important event, touring the space is crucial to understand layout, AV capabilities, catering, and other factors. You’ll also want to learn more about facilities in the area. 

While in the past, this would require a costly in-person visit, in the future these virtual site visits could streamline costs while still providing valuable, real-time information. 

Hybrid business events

Virtual spaces enable collaboration, even at a distance, with a more immersive setting than video conferencing provides alone. The MICE sector is one area where this VR application is already used. At conferences and trade shows, businesses employ a hybrid approach to access a broader global audience. They do this through tools like interactive virtual reality booths and both livestreamed and on-demand content for their virtual attendees. 

For companies attending onsite, VR can also transform corporate events by turning abstract ideas and complex data into engaging experiences. For example, a financial services provider could use VR to render market trends in 3D for conference attendees to interact with. 

Of course, the current VR experience is far from frictionless. High hardware costs, compatibility requirements and lack of user familiarity mean that it could be some time before VR becomes a standard piece of equipment in hybrid meetings.

But looking ahead, we can imagine the potential benefits of incorporating VR into the workplace. Today’s flexible working patterns mean that there are often situations where some team members will be travelling, others at the office, and many working from home. Meeting in these virtual spaces could ensure all employees arrive on equal footing, from anywhere in the world, creating a virtual work-friendly environment.

Business traveller support

The future of business travel will involve increasingly personalised virtual support at every stage. What this looks like for the average business traveller remains to be seen, but we can gain some idea through experimental uses currently being tested by early adopters. It might start with AI-driven travel agents that already know your preferences and extend to interactive VR customer service assistants. 

One example is Qatar Airways’ MetaHuman cabin crew, which provides an interactive experience with passengers, presenting airline features and virtual assistance.

For businesses looking at new ways to support their travelling teams, it’s worth researching these experimental cases and considering the development and integration of your own virtual concierge. This technology could potentially be developed to support travellers 24/7, assisting with real-time itinerary management, troubleshooting, and booking assistance. 

Pre-trip training sessions

From destination-specific safety briefings to a virtual run-through of client expectations, VR might also make future pre-trip training sessions more immersive and impactful. 

We can imagine the potential by looking at how companies are already integrating VR into regular training. 

A prime example is MGM Resorts’ collaboration with immersive platform provider Strivr. Facing record staff turnover in 2021, MGM gave aspiring front-of-house staff a more realistic feel for the MGM experience using custom VR headsets. Lobby hosts and front desk agents could practice real-world simulations while following the experience of a typical guest at MGM casinos and resorts. At the end, 92% of participants felt more confident in their skills, with 94% feeling that VR technology was effective in delivering these results. 

Another example of how VR can be used for training in a fun way involves US-based fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), which trains its cooks using a virtual escape room format. Its VR game ‘The Hard Way’ uses playful design and game mechanics, with built-in mini challenges along the way. New employees gain virtual experience in the steps of preparing KFC chicken, even before travelling to their eventual worksite. 

This type of concept can easily be applied to business travel preparation in the future, with mini VR challenges like navigating a complex airport terminal with time limits, logging travel expense receipts in a virtual system, or practising business etiquette with AI characters.  

Business travel gamification

Gamification in business travel is often used to improve compliance via elements like points, badges, leaderboards, and progress bars that reward employees for following company policies. The immersive nature of virtual reality travel experiences makes VR a natural fit for this strategy. Companies can add extra layers to competitions that compel their workers to follow instructions, as seen in the KFC training escape room example above. 

For travel companies, gamification can also enhance their user experience. Look no further than destination app Nexto, which uses a combination of AR-augmented storytelling, quizzes, and challenges to bring its cities to life, before visitors even arrive.  

Using VR tools to increase business travel’s ROI

Amidst a backdrop of economic uncertainty, businesses are growing more intentional with their bookings. A top trend for 2026 is the idea of ‘intentional travel’ that cuts down on routine, unnecessary trips to focus on those that provide the most measurable ROI. There are many situations where face-to-face business travel is the best choice – whether it’s negotiating important contracts or developing cross-cultural business relationships. 

Yet VR technology can lighten the load, removing the expense of in-person site visits and scouting trips by facilitating remote communication. Your business can save on training costs as well through virtual simulations. Cutting these costs frees company resources for critical in-person events. 

Plus, by enhancing the business travel planning process with immersive, in-depth site visits, your business will be better prepared to enter new markets with a localised understanding of each destination.  

Tips for integrating VR into your business travel planning

It’s clear that business travel virtual reality tools present exciting opportunities. But with headsets available from companies like Meta Quest, HTC Vive, and Apple, plus a range of immersive learning platforms to choose from, you’ll need to compare options carefully.

Before selecting a headset, app or platform, you’ll need to take the following considerations into account. 

• Security: Does the platform keep your data secure? 
• Operability: Does the platform integrate with your existing systems?
• Purpose: Who will use the VR technology, and when? 
• Uptake: How will you roll out the VR tools to your team?
• Training: Will business travellers know how to use VR tools? 
• Hygiene: If audiences will be using VR headsets at an event, how will they be sanitised?

By answering these questions first, you’ll be better prepared to compare devices and apps from different providers and find the best fit for your company objectives. 

Plan your next trip with Booking.com for Business

While there are many exciting applications for VR tourism, there are also aspects of business travel that cannot be replaced with virtual elements. This includes booking the physical elements of your business trip, which is where Booking.com for Business can help. After using VR tools in the planning stages, you can then visit our free, all-in-one business travel management solution to book the hotels, business flights, and hire cars you’re most interested in. 

Conclusion

Already standard in gaming, entertainment, and live events, VR technology’s benefits are now being explored in other areas, including business travel. Travel planners can gain inspiration for their itineraries, while finance teams can plan in-person trips more strategically, supported by the power of virtual spaces. 

Whether you’re looking for ways to streamline trip planning, engage audiences at MICE events or improve your ROI, these virtual reality travel tools are worth exploring and adding to your toolkit as a supplement to travel management platforms.