How Can Virtual Reality Change the Events Industry?
Virtual reality (also known as “VR”) is making waves in the entertainment industry, specifically in video gaming and most recently, in theme parks with real-life roller coaster rides paired with VR headsets to transport visitors to incredible worlds and experiencing death-defying adventures.
While VR has been predominantly used to thrill, its applications are expanding – with events being the next big industry that could benefit greatly from VR implementation.
Here’s how VR can change (and in some ways, is already changing) the events industry.
With VR events, anyone can participate
One of the biggest requests that organisers of popular events receive, is to “Please bring the event to my country/state/town.”
Location is a huge factor in why interested participants cannot attend an event. After all, if your event takes place across the globe from eager audiences, they’ll need to incur additional costs with flights, hotel bookings, and taking additional time off from work to travel – all this, on top of the event’s ticket price.
VR events can change this paradigm completely, allowing an Australian to be a part of a live event that’s happening in America – by simply paying for a virtual event ticket and donning his VR headset and headphones. At the conclusion of the day’s activities, he simply unplugs, goes to sleep in his own bed, and wakes up refreshed for the next day’s agenda.
Live user inputs
Another benefit of being connected, is that participants can join in the interaction by providing live feedback after presentations, asking speakers questions during Q&A sessions, and interacting with other participants via their keyboard or mobile device.
While your live event participants can interact using apps such as the Angage Event App, VR audiences can do the same – forming an expanded field of interaction with questions, answers, and feedback from around the globe.
If you’ve read any of our previous articles on the positive impact that collecting event feedback and gamifying your events have on your event’s return on investment (ROI), you’ll know how important it is to know what your audiences think of your event, and brand. Now, you can hear from a truly international audience, not only a captive one.
This is only the beginning
Despite the impressive advances in VR that we’ve seen in recent years, the technology and its applications is still very much in its exploratory stages.
As the costs of VR hardware goes down and these devices become commonplace in everyday households, VR audiences could quickly be your biggest source of ticket sales.
The question is, will you be ready and willing to shake up your industry with a VR event when the time comes?
