As travel restrictions continue to limit the ability of eventprofs and other stakeholders to conduct site visits in preparation for their events, venues and destinations have adapted their strategy and begun offering options like virtual tours.
Among these forward-thinking venues is Australia’s Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre (GCCEC), which debuted a robust extended reality app, GCCECXR, last month that allows users to visit the space remotely on a 1:1 scale.
“GCCECXR wasn’t officially in the pipeline prior to the pandemic, but it had been on the radar for a while,” says Michelle Mann, Director of Sales and Marketing at GCCEC. The venue had previously released virtual floor plans and a 360-degree virtual site tour — which garnered 5,500 views in 8 weeks — but the XR tool is its most immersive and technologically advanced offering yet.
Mann shares that the response to the 360-video site tour, which was filmed during Covid, “was so awesome that we began researching a more engaging, innovative and interactive tool.” GCCEC ended up working with Handbuilt Creative, an extended reality creation company, to build the app, which was supported by Tourism Australia’s Business Events Boost Program.
Although these immersive technologies are not new, the pandemic has forced the events industry to implement them in new ways, and GCCECXR is a case in point. “I had experienced virtual reality for the event industry at a conference in the US a few years ago and was interested in exploring how we might use it to grow our business,” explains Mann. “Fast forward to 2020 and the introduction of Covid travel restrictions — we revisited the possibility of virtual reality but were blown away by the work of Handbuilt in building extended reality experiences.”
The app superimposes a virtual model of the venue onto a real-world surface, allowing users to walk through it, including the main arena, exhibition halls and meeting rooms, using their mobile device. For a convention center that hosted between 80 and 100 in-person site tours in a normal, pre-pandemic year, GCCECXR has been an important business tool. “Through ad campaigns, organic sharing and direct contact with clients, we are reaching planners, associations and corporates on a global scale,” notes Mann.
For GCCEC, the innovation is only beginning. “The tool not only positions GCCEC as an innovator in the industry,” says Mann, “it has also raised awareness of the venue in new markets. We will continue to push it out to drive business and hopefully even develop further capabilities in extended reality enabled event design in our spaces.”