Travel company Amadeus is testing a new booking service that lets travelers model a trip using a Virtual Reality headset. The innovation allows travellers to spin a globe of the world, visit a destination, search for flights, walk through a plane to select their seat, check out different rental cars, and pay for their entire trip— all without leaving virtual reality. “We live in a 3D world, why shouldn’t we shop for travel that way?”
This was the idea that inspired Justin Wilde, a user experience developer at Navitaire, an Amadeus company, to convince his manager to let him develop a concept that would allow travellers to complete an entire travel booking all in VR. Four months later, Wilde’s VR experience was ready for its first booking. “I see a future in which the internet will be a 3D experience, and everyone will have their own portable 3D headsets. This will be a much more natural experience for us, because the world we live in has three dimensions. I think technology, and the way we design user experience online should reflect that too,” says Wilde.
