Booking portal Airbnb wants to enhance the travel experience of its customers by adding virtual and augmented reality features.
In a blog post, Airbnb explained how it hopes to re-shape the booking experience by bringing travellers to their destination before they even get there.
With the use of 360-degree photos and 3D scans, the person could step into the home they wish to rent or the city they are planning to visit, through the help of their gadgets.
They could also take travel planning to the next level with more interactive communications with their host and fellow travellers.
The AR feature, on the other hand, should make the actual trip more seamless and immersive. Airbnb plans to use AR and other related technologies to help travellers navigate through foreign environments as well as languages.
"It can also be stressful when someone doesn't know how to unlock the door or turn on the hot water for a shower, or when they're hopelessly lost and everything is in a foreign language," the announcement said.
The booking platform also wants to change the stereotype that virtual and augmented reality applications isolate people from the rest of the world, by using them instead to bring people closer together.
With the recent launch of VR and AR apps in various gadgets over the year, Airbnb wants to really put them to good use.
Airbnb has been planning to use VR to strengthen connections between travellers and hosts within the platform since last year. This new formal announcement could mean Airbnb is close to actually launching the feature.
"It seems like a theme of Mobile World Congress is virtual reality, so maybe we could do that. It would be nice to do a virtual walk through of an apartment before you book, it's all in the future but it's relevant and it's possible," Mike Curtis, VP of engineering at Airbnb, said at the Mobile World Congress in 2016.
