Pretty much any business with a physical premises, or who deals in construction work or property could use virtual tours to market their business. But in particular, venues with beautiful buildings, gardens and unique features tend to benefit most. From wedding venues to hotels, estates, spas, golf courses and luxury B&Bs – all of these businesses thrive on the visual impact of their location. So in order to stand out from the crowd of other venues, you need to do something really special. Virtual tours help to create an emotional connection with your website visitors by allowing them to explore your venue from the comfort of their own living room.
In the current lockdown situation, this ability to show your potential customers around your property virtually has never been more useful.
Of course, there are some industries that would benefit more than others. These include:
Holiday accommodation: How cosy and homely holiday accommodation looks is often a key factor when deciding where to stay on holiday. Stand out amongst your competitors with a modern and engaging virtual walkthrough. Giving prospective guests a chance to look around your accommodation will significantly increase your chances of being chosen.
Tourist attractions: Turn your attraction into a must-visit destination by giving people a peek into what they can see when they visit your attraction. Capture the attention of potential and returning visitors and increase footfall all year round.
Estate Agents: Show off your properties from the best angle, every time. Estate agents can use virtual tours to help prospective renters or buyers understand their properties better, see if it meets their needs and speed up the rate of sale and rental. It also saves a lot of time by cutting out wasted viewings!
HMO managers: Using virtual tours, tenants can walk around any property, anytime, anywhere, without having to leave their home, Particularly useful for HMO managers, who can split the tour into sub tours, so you can send prospective tenants a tour of just one room and the communal areas, rather than other private rooms.
Universities: Many universities are now offering a virtual tour of their accommodation options. These give new students the chance to look around their new home in advance, and plan what their new living / party space will look like!
Retail premises: Show the world not only the outside of your showroom, but the inside as well. Entice online shoppers in with a preview of what you have on offer 24/7, showcase your store in an engaging way and present your customers with the shopping experience they can expect to receive.
Construction sites: Share the progress of projects, guide subcontractors around their chosen areas and speed up projects by sharing information remotely. It might seem like an odd choice, but regular virtual tours of construction projects, undertaken throughout the course of a project, can be a real benefit, given how easily this imagery can be shared with multiple remote parties.
If you run a business that fits into one of the categories described above, then there are certain things your customers expect of you – one of which is to be wowed with high quality imagery on your website and in your marketing materials. A virtual tour is a fantastic addition to this material, putting you head and shoulders above the competition and creating an asset for your business that will pay for itself for years to come.