(6 Mar 2014) Leisure travel has always been primarily about experiencing a new place, seeing the sites, learning about the culture and relaxing far away from home.
But increasingly it's also about the gadgets that can help you along the way.
The ITB (International Tourism Bourse) in Berlin is one of the largest tourism trade fairs in the world attracting 10-thousand exhibitors, most trying to promote tourism hot spots.
But 170 exhibitors at this year's fair are focusing on technology for travel and tourism.
Nils Muller is a trend expert and the founder of TrendOne, a company specialising in identifying worldwide micro and macro tendencies.
He says there are three main trends in the tourism industry right now:
"The first one is the outernet, so we are not in the Internet anymore. The Internet explodes out of the computer, into the real world, augments the real world with additional information, and connects every object in the web of things. So that is the outernet. Secondly a big trend is multi channel. So, we are not having one channel anymore, we have multiple channels and connect all channels together. And the third trend is new business models."
One company that is trying to combine those three trends is the THIS IS! Digital Media Group.
It has developed software that works with the Oculus Rift headset, a virtual reality headset normally used for gaming, to allow customers to see hotels in 3D before booking their room.
The hotel or resort needs to scan their rooms, spas, gardens or even the beach nearby and upload the information on a database.
Potential customers can then use the headsets to virtually walk around the hotel, look at the rooms or visit the surrounding environment before deciding whether to book.
Yannick Muller, the PR representative for THIS IS! Digital Media Group, explains:
"For a person who wants to book a journey, the person could experience some parts of the journey before. Watching with these glasses and seeing for example the hotel room before the person arrives or for example going to the beach, experiencing the nature."
The product is still a concept at this stage with no definite launch date.
Trying on the headset, visitor Katja Reh says she's impressed:
"It is like you are in the room. I want to sit down on the bed. I want to open the door. It is like I'm moving in the hotel room."
Another company is using a far smaller screen, but one it hopes will transform skiing.
Evolaris has developed new software for the Oakley Airwave 1.5 smart goggles.
The regular Oakley Airwave can measure speed, elevation and distance, but the software from Evolaris adds information about the ski resort as well as up to date information about weather, snow forecasts and ski lifts. The goggles come with a built-in Recon display, Bluetooth connection and GPS tracking.
Evolaris product developer, Hannes Walter explains:
"You can see the waiting time in front of each ski lift. So, based on this information you can decide, will I go to this slope and have to wait for half an hour for the next ski lift or should I go to this slope and there is no waiting time."
The Oakley Airwave 1.5 cost around US $650 with the standard software. Evolaris is hoping their additional software will be available in
2015 after it has undergone further testing, including safety checks.
3D service company, Formicum is looking to 3D printing to change the way we buy souvenirs.
It could be a sculpture of the hotel where they are staying or of the sites they are visiting, or as Formicum founder, Gunther Bigl explains, a 3D map of the hike they just did:
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