QR is Dead – Long Live Augmented Reality!
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Augmented reality is a quickly expanding technology. Ioannis S. Pantelidis, senior lecturer in Hospitality at University of Brighton considers the future of augmented reality and explains why it is now time to augment your hotel experience.
In the race for better hotel pre-consumption communication and marketing messages, hoteliers of the past only had to compete with competitors. The hotelier of today has to also compete with content generated by guests.
Often such content can communicate so effectively that even the efforts of the most seasoned hotel marketer prove futile in recapturing your audience. In an effort to differentiate some communications, hoteliers experimented with Quick Response codes, or QR codes. The results so far have not given us enough measurable evidence to suggest if QR has, at large, been a success or failure in the UK.
However, it has certainly received far better success abroad and my guess is that soon QR will be a long-forgotten technology that for some hoteliers did not even register on their radar.
The nature of technology is such that before you can say the words “competitive advantage”, new technology appears and your investment on the previous generation of technology can rapidly become obsolete.
Augmented Reality
Back in 2011, in an article about interactive media I made the prediction that Augmented reality would replace QR within five years.
Well, I could have been wrong – and five years could prove to be too long if technology companies such as Layar.com continue to rapidly develop free applications that take advantage of AR and deliver enhanced experiences for smartphones.
Take a look at the following video and consider the possibilities:
Your customers already communicate about your property by creating text comments, audio files, videos, blogposts and images. Very little remains in the arsenal of the hotel marketer unless they know how to work with their guests content not against it.
But for those who may wish to be at the forefront of technology and deliver pre-sales experiences that can transform the intangible elements of their brand into something more tangible, then Augmented Reality content may just be the answer to their prayers.
By Ioannis S. Pantelidis
