New holiday trend: will we soon only be traveling virtually?
Created: 10/26/2022, 09:00
By: Franziska Kaindl
Walking on the beach, visiting a museum or diving in the sea: Virtual travel opens up many possibilities - and is becoming more and more of a trend.
Virtual travel is becoming more and more popular: About a fifth of Germans (21 percent) assume that in 2030, instead of traveling in the traditional way on site, people will travel more virtually in the metaverse or with virtual reality glasses.
This was the result of a representative survey commissioned by the digital
association Bitkom
among more than 1,000 people in Germany aged 16 and over.
Among 16 to 29 year olds, as many as 26 percent believe that virtual travel is the future.
What is the metaverse?
At least since Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company “Meta” in autumn 2021, the term should have come to some people’s ears.
The metaverse has long been a topic in the tech scene, but now it is increasingly penetrating people's everyday lives.
“I believe the metaverse is the next chapter of the internet.
What defines it is that you feel really close to other people or in a different place," Zuckerberg said at the SXSW futures fair in Texas in March of this year.
Virtual travel is possible with the help of VR glasses.
© Alberto Menendez/Imago
But what exactly is the metaverse?
In principle, it is an accessible Internet that represents an interface between the virtual and real world.
It can be experienced through VR or augmented reality glasses, but access is also possible with a smartphone or tablet.
As a 3D avatar, users can meet up with friends, go to the football stadium – or just “travel” to distant places.
All of this works without actually having to leave the house.
"In the Metaverse we can rediscover the world and have experiences that would not be possible in reality," says
Bitkom
CEO Dr.
Bernhard Rohleder.
This includes virtual excursions into the deep sea or into times long past.
But even hard-to-reach holiday destinations are suddenly accessible.
A trip to Rome: Visit the capital of Italy
View photo gallery
More and more Germans want to use virtual travel
A survey by Booking.com
also shows that virtual travel is becoming more and more of a travel trend
.
According to this, almost a third of Germans (30 percent) would like to be inspired by virtual reality when planning their vacation for next year.
For most, however, it will probably not just be a test before the actual trip - 28 percent of German travelers even want to do a multi-day VR or AR travel experience.
Many also want to use the metaverse to become more daring: 36 percent say they would be more likely to travel to destinations they never really considered if they experienced them virtually first.
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Will we really only be traveling virtually soon?
As attractive as virtual travel may sound in some respects, the majority of Germans (87 percent) continue to rely on classic travel with real experiences as a balance to everyday life, as the
Bitkom
survey showed.
The Booking.com
survey presented a similar result
: Here 64 percent of the participants believe that a virtual experience is not fulfilling enough to cancel a classic trip.
