Around the world in a Virtual reality set

BY: Jennifer Parker

My feet are planted firmly beneath me, but somehow I'm stepping into and through a map on the wall, when a blast of warm air ruffles my blouse. Now I'm on a sandy beach in Hawaii. A spray of clean ocean air mists my face.

But before I can reach out and touch the fanned leaves of a sun-kissed palm tree, the ground beneath my feet shakes and I've been sucked through a wormhole. Seconds later, I find myself in the swank lobby bar of a Marriott hotel. This is advertising on steroids. Marriott calls this a “4-D" experience and its one of the latest innovations in virtual reality. Delivered via an Oculus Rift headset inside a special Teleporter station, this experience is part of the hotel chain's “Travel Brilliantly" campaign.

You feel as if you're in a movie playing 360degrees around you, all above you, underneath your feet.You don't direct it like a video game but instead hold on and go for the ride.It very well might be the future of travel.

The Extra Dimension Wearing army camo-sneakers and chewing gum during a Sunday morning tour of his office in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, Relevent's founder and chief executive officer, Tony Berger, is amped up on the prospects of virtual reality (VR). His “experiential marketing“ firm was hired by Marriott to help create the Teleporter.

“The secret sauce," he says, “is in 4D, because being on a vacation affects more than just your eyes and ears." So when you step onto the beach you smell the salty air (via a synced scent release), or when you tunnel through a wormhole you feel the ground shake (via motion signals and a rumbling platform).

Relegated to geeky fantasy for years, VR hardware is suddenly cheap, portable and there for the travel-brand taking. For his next off-therecord project for Marriott, he'll be using $199 off-theshelf Gear VR headsets by Samsung to view a Galaxy 6 or Galaxy Note 4 smartphone running Oculus software.

“It's a race right now for content. If you're first, you win."

Travel companies such as Thomas Cook, Qantas Airways and Destination BC in Canada are also creating their own promotional VR videos.