Several Startups Initiating Virtual Tour Products, Try to Revitalize the Tourism Business

Today (20/5) marketplace digital umrah and religious tour agency Travalal launched a new service. Called by "Virtual Reality Tourism", is a tour program that is packaged courses utilizing 360° video technology and live tours using the app video conference. There are various tourist destinations on offer, both locally and abroad, including including virtual Umrah religious tourism.

Travalal's Founder & CEO Joyo Diharjo said that this initiative was developed as a step for the company to survive in the midst of a pandemic. As is known, the Covid-19 have a significant impact for the travel and tourism industry around the world.

"We hope with virtual tourism With this, the tourism industry players can have new job and income potential as virtual tour operators. We don't want to stand idly by without a solution. We are ready to provide training for them. Later, after being trained, Travalal will help market their services," added Joyo.

Antourin also offer similar services amid the social-physical restrictions imposed in many areas. The platform that offers vacation travel planning offers various virtual tour packages of various tourist attractions in Indonesia at relatively affordable rates.

Like real tours, virtual tours are also equipped with tour guides who are ready to explain and answer questions about the objects visited. Conference applications such as Zoom, Google Maps, and Street View are used in the implementation.

Global players such as Airbnb, TripAdvisor and several others are also carrying out similar initiatives. For Airbnb, via Online experienceThe program does not only visit tourist attractions, but also presents joint activities, such as cooking Balinese specialties, which can be followed virtually.

So far, there is no comprehensive data that has succeeded in validating the effectiveness of virtual tour activities, especially for market share in Indonesia. Moreover, to answer "are they willing to pay to do a virtual tour?" Although the basic concept is actually similar to the conversion of classroom learning activities to virtual learning activities -- which is starting to validate its acceptance among users. Businesses affected by the pandemic are indeed being forced to innovate to present "the new normal"-New.

Something didn't work out

Trapped by the pandemic, this month Airy chose to closing operations. Since the beginning of the year, when the Covid-19 pandemic began to haunt the Southeast Asian region, there has been a sharp decline for Airy service users. Made worse by initiative lockdown and physical distancing in almost all countries where people travel (out of town or abroad) are hardly done by people.

Observing the current conditions, to DailySocial Economist from the Center of Reform on Economics (CORE) Yusuf Rendy Manilet believes that OTA players in Indonesia will definitely be hit hard by Covid-19. However, Yusuf saw that they were not hopeless in this precarious situation.

"I think they can take advantage of the potential of domestic tourists but those that are more local in nature, such as culinary tourism," said Yusuf.