As self confessed promoters of virtual tours as an invaluable sales and marketing tool for the Meetings & Events and Hospitality sectors, sometimes their other applications can be seriously overlooked. So we thought we’d share some insight into a few different ways that 3D and 360 virtual tours can be game changers.
Apprenticeship recruitment
Encouraging those with more of an aptitude for vocational learning than academic studies into progressing their career through apprenticeships can be quite a challenge. And conveying to potential candidates exactly what they should expect from the workplace is often a huge hurdle in the recruitment process.
Here at Venue View, we recently partnered with AutoRaise – a charity who were seeking to overcome these very barriers. Their aim is to attract and support new talent in the automotive repair industry through apprenticeships. So, together, we set about create a virtual bodyshop tour, which will help them showcase some of the daily tasks an apprentice will have the opportunity to carry out throughout their career.
To achieve this, volunteer apprentices were recruited to take a starring role in a number of specially created videos, embedded throughout the tour. Volunteers talked prospective apprentices through the processes they were carrying out to demonstrate each stage of the automotive repair process from the apprentice’s perspective. This enabled AutoRaise to bring their Venue View virtual tour to life – creating a unique, engaging and totally immersive recruitment tool.
Education
Virtual tours have multiple benefits for educational establishments – particularly in the independent sector. From marketing and admissions, to operations, but also as an educational tool in their own right.
We’ve seen a huge rise in the uptake of virtual tours of museums and places of significant cultural and historic interest, which has meant that these venues have been able to remain open to school visits throughout the pandemic. In addition, they’ve provided teaching staff and students with vital tools to enrich the learning process throughout an extremely unsettling period with little respite from academic studies.
Thinking ahead to life beyond the pandemic, creating immersive and interactive virtual tours means that these destinations are able to attract a much larger audience from a wider geographic reach, enhancing the education of students far and wide and adding a new dimension to their studies. For sites of cultural, historical and architectural interest, the possibilities are endless when it comes to opening their doors to a global audience via their virtual twin.
A couple of our educational virtual tours include The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park and Eden Camp.
Staff Training
In the retail sector a virtual tour can provide businesses with a valuable reference tool for staff training on new product ranges, visual merchandising guidelines, health & safety and store standards.
For new recruits to be able to familiarise themselves with the store environment, the flow of the store and its layout before they even set foot inside the physical store, saves time and resources on day 1.
Operations
From an operational perspective in any setting, a virtual tour can be invaluable when it comes to general maintenance, accidental damage or larger scale refurbishments and renovations.
Every Venue View virtual tour includes a handy measurement tool, making it easy to evaluate available space and plan changes to layouts and not on a rudimentary level. A 3D scan of a space quickly records all the data required for suppliers to provide accurate bids, which saves numerous site visits and disruption to the day to day running of the site.
In addition, designers can generate accurate point cloud data directly from a Matterport 3D model to quickly create CAD, Revit or SketchUp models.
When it comes to both maintenance and refurbishments, the ‘MatterTag’ function allows for the recording of issues, fixes and the clear labelling of fitments and fittings – no more climbing up a ladder only to find you have the wrong light bulb!
Portfolio
If you’re a business that works in the 3D space – a designer, builder, carpenter, tiler, bathroom or kitchen fitter, a virtual tour of any finished project makes a great addition to your portfolio and a fabulously engaging feature on your website to showcase your skills to any prospective clients. Beats flicking through pages of photos any time, and allows potential clients to view a space from any given angle.
Future
We really do believe, with the rate at which tech is advancing that this is just the tip of the iceberg for virtual tours and it’s safe to say, the future is bright, with no end to their potential usage in any number of industries.
