Marriott Hotels is partnering with video effects and creative content studio Framestore to create Marriott Hotels’ virtual travel experience, giving consumers a fully immersive, 4-D sensory experience based in Oculus Rift technology. Travel enthusiasts can see, hear and feel what it’s like to be in destinations halfway across the globe and at Marriott Hotels of the future — all within its traveling teleporter coming to eight U.S. cities beginning Thursday in New York.
The program is anchored by the Marriott Hotels virtual travel experience Teleporter — a phone-booth-like structure that takes cues from iconic science-fiction books and movies. The Teleporter features the Oculus Rift DK2 virtual-reality headset, wireless headphones and suite of onboard 4-D sensory elements.
To create a virtual travel experience that truly feels like “being there,” Marriott Hotels turned to Framestore and experiential marketing agency Relevent to develop a new technique for capturing 3-D, 360-degree live-action video, and then mixing that video with photo real CGI (computer-generated imagery) and 4-D elements such as heat, wind and mist. The result is a virtual-reality experience starting in a version of a new Marriott Greatroom lobby and then virtually traveling to a black-sand beach in Maui, Hawaii, and to the top of a skyscraper in downtown London.
“Marriott seized on virtual reality and teleportation to give the next generation of travelers the clear-cut notion that more amazing travel experiences are coming and to encourage them to co-create the future of travel with us on TravelBrilliantly.com, where their best ideas enter Marriott’s innovation pipeline,” said Michael Dail, vice president, Marriott Hotels brand marketing.