As internet technology evolution goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers and companies are finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases facilitating the industryÔÇÖs growth at an exponential rate.
The Metaverse offers innovative opportunities to businesses. Here are some use cases in the Travel and Tourism industry.
Travel and Tourism
The tourism sector has suffered its greatest setback in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But with the promise of Metaverse, travel, and tourism companies are pivoting their strategies to provide novel and unique holiday experiences.
AR and VR for Virtual Tourism
The metaverse immersive experience uses AR and VR technologies to create a virtual holiday experience for users who are unable to travel to their chosen destinations.
The metaverse will allow people to travel to any part of the world irrespective of their physical location, and their well-being, and eliminate the time, effort, and expense spent on actual travel.
Digital avatars allow tourists to have an interactive traveling experience that comes to the physical world by exploring destinations with fellow tourists and moving together as a group.
Through the creation of virtual theme parks, virtual museums, and virtual zoos customers can enjoy an experience that is like the one that they would enjoy in real life. Besides, the hassles and costs associated with real-life museums, parks etc., can be avoided.
Digital avatars allow tourists to have an interactive traveling experience similar to the physical world by exploring destinations with fellow tourists and moving together as a group.
Google Earth VR, Overview CollectionÔÇÖs Escape Now, and Immerse from the Hydrous are examples of immersive tours and virtual travel experiences.┬á┬á
Use of VR to boost sales
The tourism industry can leverage Virtual Reality capabilities to boost real-world tour site sales too. Thomas Cook commissioned Visualise for its ÔÇÿTry before you FlyÔÇÖ Campaign to produce a series of immersive 360 VR films. Potential tourists visited holiday destinations in virtual reality using Samsung Gear VR allowing them to decide whether they actually wanted to do a trip in real-time. The results were truly amazing, with a 190% increase in New York Excursion bookings after viewing the 5-minute VR holiday version.
Travel World VR offers immersive experiences to potential tourists by letting them try out accommodations and destinations before they book real-world tickets.
Agents and hotels encourage their clients to book their trips and holiday stays on Platforms like SkyNav and Amadeus that offer a VR experience where the clients get a 360-degree view of their hotels or holiday destinations, leading to an increase in reservations.
Visitor Experience at Online Trading Shows
Metaverse can help enhance visitor experience at trade shows, expositions, exhibitions with a greater sense of immersion through social interactions using digital avatars.
Virtual Booking process
Instead of using a traditional computer or a touch screen to make a booking, VR headsets can enable the entire booking process where potential customers can visit the hotel virtually. They can explore its facilities and make the booking all through the VR headset providing a smooth, convenient, and fast experience.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses. Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
As internet technology evolution goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers and companies are finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases facilitating the industryÔÇÖs growth at an exponential rate.
The Metaverse offers innovative opportunities to businesses. Here are some use cases where it can favorably impact the healthcare delivery model in the following areas:
Telepresence
Metaverse in healthcare has introduced new avenues for offering treatments at subsidized rates and in geographical locations that health providers may not be able to visit through telepresence. Virtual 3D clinics offer an easy and convenient way for patients and doctors to interact with each other. They are especially effective in the case of minor health conditions where a doctor could diagnose a patient without any physical examination and all that is needed is for the patient and doctor to have headsets.
Mental health is another area where metaverse could prove beneficial. Through immersive VR experiences, psychiatrists could treat disorders like PTS (post-traumatic stress), Anxiety, Delusions, Eating disorders, and so on.
gameChange is a landmark Virtual Reality Therapy that treats patients who suffer from psychosis ÔÇô it targets the extreme anxiety that keeps patients from participating in day-to-day activities. The trial results showed that the treatment was effective and extremely popular among patients with high uptake rates.
Decentralized storage through Blockchain
Blockchain is a key technology that drives the metaverse. The management and security of highly sensitive and valuable health data is the most significant application of Blockchain in healthcare. Blockchains allow for data to be stored securely through decentralized, distributed, and encrypted databases. When a patientÔÇÖs health records are stored on a blockchain, it makes them difficult to hack. They are also easily accessible when a patient gives consent to a doctor to review his records just with the click of a button.
Digital Twins
Digital twins are virtual models or simulations of any process, system, or object that generate real-world data with the purpose of learning more about the real-world counterpart. In the metaverse, Digital twins can be used to create ÔÇÿtest dummiesÔÇÖ for individuals which can be used to predict outcomes, e.g.: response to specific medications, recovery from surgery and illness, and so on. Med-tech companies like Siemens Healthineers and GE Healthcare are investing in digital twin technology.
Precision Surgery through AR/VR
Immersive Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and AI technologies are helping surgeons to perform minimally invasive and more precise surgeries by getting a 3D view of the patientÔÇÖs body which helps them to plan and perform operations.
Moreover, the data gathered from the patientÔÇÖs digital twin will help them to predict recovery duration, possible complications, and prescribed treatments if complications arise post the surgical procedure.
Zimmer BiometÔÇÖs OptiVu Mixed Reality platform uses Microsoft Hololens2 to offer a mixed-reality world that offers innovative solutions to streamline surgical planning and workflow and offers real-time support that enables surgeons and care teams to collaborate and improve patient outcomes.
Training
Traditional medical training offers limited resources for the practice of surgeries partly because dissection procedures on cadavers prove to be costly for hospitals. With VR, students can train in a simulated environment at a significantly lower cost.
Dissection on a virtual cadaver improves learning outcomes as it enables students to work individually. It enhances studentsÔÇÖ technical capabilities such as precision and decision-making skills and is cost-effective too.
Collaboration
Instant sharing of information between doctors and support staff will ultimately lead to quicker diagnosis and quality healthcare service.
Veyond Metaverse offers XR technology solutions that augment and improve medical education and training, surgical planning and procedures, and diagnosis and treatments through its proprietary cloud communication platform.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses.
Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
As internet technology goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers, and companies and finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases with the industry growing at an exponential rate.
Metaverse offers innovative opportunities in manufacturing.
The metaverse has tremendous potential to transform the manufacturing industry as it exists today. The most obvious use case is that of digital twins ÔÇô virtual replicas of physical entities -┬áof the industrial and manufacturing spaces which offer users both a macro and a micro visualization of their plants and facilities. At an enterprise or macro level, it could offer a holistic and complete insight into the functioning of the organization in real-time. At a micro level, shop floor employees could use the metaverse space to monitor performance and identify and fix issues of individual equipment with its components, as if they were physically present there.
The worldÔÇÖs largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, is using the Metaverse to enhance its operations by using Azure Digital Twins to create breweries and supply chain digital models that are synced to the physical environment in real-time. The benefits of this archetype are fine-tuning the brewing process and quality control.
Research states that training in Metaverse results in students learning 4 times faster than they would in a traditional classroom environment.  
The immersive learning process in the Metaverse has far better outcomes than in a traditional classroom setting and students learn better and faster in a VR environment.  
Training in the Metaverse environment for the manufacturing industry implies safe and risk-free training in a safe virtual environment. In a real-world environment, an apprentice undergoing training with heavy physical equipment might face risks in a potentially hazardous setting. 
Companies like JetBlue use VR technology to train their technicians. A real-life scenario of training technicians with real aircraft would be expensive and time-consuming and potentially risky. The company used VR sets for its technicians and in collaboration with Strivr deployed a solution that simulated a real-life setting and eliminated the time, expense, and risk of a physical environment. Also, training in a VR metaverse allows a trainee to make mistakes in a secure environment without undesirable consequences.
The Engineering and Aerospace conglomerate, Honeywell, uses AR and VR in its training efforts.   VR and Mixed Reality can be used to provide remote assistance and collaboration in the resolution of complex repair and maintenance issues. Technicians in the BMW facility use AR glasses to provide a hands-free video overlay and at the same time connect with support teams sitting many miles away to fix the issues. 
Manufacturers can also benefit from Metaverse simulations of their facilities to test possible factory scenarios which will then enable them to develop methods to automate and optimize their plants. Before creating its actual factory in Bavaria, BMW in its virtual factory, replicated its complete production workflow digitally to ensure that all processes were optimized and operated smoothly.  
Metaverse can benefit manufacturers by facilitating improved consumer decision making too. For e.g.: automotive manufacturers can enable prospective buyers to ÔÇ£touch and feelÔÇØ a car and even customize it to their tastes before they buy it. This simulation and visualization of the actual car help manufacturers understand the customerÔÇÖs requirements the first time and minimize the effort and expense involved in rework.┬á┬áThe metaverse can help car dealerships by facilitating test drives from the comfort of a prospective customer’s home, helping sell cars, and broadening the dealerships’ reach. Opportunities in this space include establishing a virtual dealership for customers to ask the dealer questions about their vehicles, take a test drive, or even just view vehicles.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has created a world of online and offline convergence with the manufacturing industry being a major part of it. The industrial metaverse aims to bring digital experiences to inherently physical processes, taking digital transformation and ÔÇ£Industry 4.0ÔÇØ to a new level. The industrial metaverse starts with a digital experience before translating it to physical operations, rather than using IoT or building digital platforms to bring machines online. This is useful in areas such as predictive maintenance and asset monitoring and can be done remotely. The metaverse also offers significant advantages in Industry 4.0 regarding training employees and accessing data.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses.
Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
As internet technology goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers and companies and finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases with the industry growing at an exponential rate.
Metaverse offers innovative opportunities in business functions such as remote collaboration.
Metaverse can address the challenges of remote work by providing a 3D virtual work environment where employees in their digital avatars could communicate and collaborate remotely with the team in real-time, ensuring productivity.
It also provides users with some semblance of real-life by connecting, interacting, and relaxing with peers in virtual meeting rooms and lounges.
Holoportation is a term that defines employees located in different parts of the world and collaborating in a virtual room. Metaverse allows users to be a part of holographic experience in a collaborative interaction in virtual meetings from different physical locations.
Metaverse also provides the right setting for different kinds of meetings, for instance, the ambiance of a basic meeting room would be different from a town hall meeting or a traditional conference room, or a training room. It allows users to create fit-for-purpose rooms where they can superimpose themselves in the virtual world and create the surrounding that is appropriate for their requirement.
Global enterprises like Nike, McDonaldÔÇÖs, YouTube, and Walt Disney apart from brick-and-mortar structures also have invested in virtual offices.
eXp World a cloud-based real-estate brokerage and technology platform, operates its entire business in the metaverse with employees and clients collaborating irrespective of their geographical location.
ÔÇÿViceverseÔÇÖ is a metaverse-based headquarters created for the Vice Media Group in collaboration with the architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group with meetings, briefing sessions, demos, presentations, etc. being held in this virtual office. Viceverse serves as the agencyÔÇÖs virtual innovation lab allowing clients to experiment with NFTs, DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), and Web 3.0.
Virtuworx offers a hybrid VR and MR environment with customization solutions to different requirement settings for events, offices, conferences, virtual training, and trade shows to users participating in their digital avatars.
Facebook HorizonÔÇÖs Workrooms is another example of employees collaborating in the Virtual Reality space.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses. Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.