Gunabalan's musings on making sense of benefitting from Metaverse, Nvidia Omniverse Ai, and VR, NFTs and DAOs.

I suspect Covid 19/20/21 is helping push virtual immersive experiences that is coming to us come faster than industry initially anticipated. 

Within the next decade,  Metaverse will reach 1 billion people- that's the bold prediction from Meta chairman and owner Zuckerberg and if what he says is true, then the sheer scale of that audience means there are going to be significant opportunities for related industries such as travel and hospitality players. 

Now just for a moment, can you imagine the sheer benefit if all these techs converge? Allowing something like the Omniverse codes which are easily scalable, open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation to traverse between languages, codes, apps and sites to allow universal confluence for creators' imagination?

Basically, what I propose is allowing the digital realm to simulate and process the physical realm. A copy of what we have now in the world and who knows, as our imagination soars, the real world could one day benefit from the technological superimpositions of this digital world?

How? Well for one thing,...Travel planning is one aspect that can and will enter this new metamorphosis, and as an avid traveller, i would like to be able to see inside the hotel rooms and be able to walk around the hotel's amenities as if on a live tour of the hotel to help me make my choice.

It would help sell, i imagine, the sheer joy and gleeful experience of the ( future) stay to potential guests, methinks. 

And why not?  Just consider the possibilities a digital concierge that can offer recommendations for restaurants, attractions, and shopping avenues that fit your budget or needs, e.t.c or ....a check-in process that happens in the metaverse via a digital front desk sebelum you keluar kereta... Wah..kan canggih!

It's also easy to see how this could help hotel owners address the labor shortage by making these remote/metaverse positions available. 

The other obvious application for hotels is the MICE or events industry, the ability to fully combine in-person with remote/metaverse would substantially improve hybrid conferences where there is a mix of in-person and remote attendees. 

I could anticipate luxury properties in Singapore, Dubai, New York and London being the early-adopters of the metaverse since it is hyper-personalized and experiential and those are key trends in luxury travel.

Assuming VR gets its power- on, and the metaverse gets its financial clout or traction, I could see a future demand for meta-hotels where brands and luxe companies can offer their latest specialised goods and services without worry of safety, geographic locations and security...Or interior design layouts for your meta-home that are styled from high-end hospitality brands and sponsored as such e.g. you could pay a fee to have your metaverse 'home' transformed to a Four Seasons Resort and your appointments can be done there holographicly and or through your avatar!

In the future you may even be willing to pay for a 'digital stay' in a luxury resort that exists purely in the metaverse, the advantage for the hotel? No housekeeping if it's digital!😀

The metaverse help break the “walls” between humans and machines. Using holograms and avatars can “humanize” the robotic services that hotels offer.

On the one hand, travelers preferring human interactions with real service staff would feel less reluctant to the automatic services provided by avatars. 

On the other hand, hotels can address the labor shortage challenge by replacing labor-intensive positions with machines/robots. Using AI-powered avatars can further eliminate the variations in service operations caused by humans' individual factors.

Besides creating an immersive digital experience for the hotel guests, the metaverse can also become a virtual workspace for hotel staff. For example, hotels can offer flexible, work-from-home schedules in the metaverse that today's workforce demands. 

Metaverse may come sooner to the hospitality industry than we anticipate today.  But the key to it all are risks and investment protocols these hotel owners have to assume, which means finance, banking and related industry and insurance bean counter executives have to buy in into the idea and roll out financialbhelp for the creation of concepts they are shown.

I think all the hedge fund houses, including Meta, Alphabet and Black Rock has its work cut out for it, to work in close conjunction with these industries in order to let guests experience the establishment before even setting foot in the property. 

Imagine the day when a way for guests to check out the hotel or destination before traveling - maybe making reviews less relevant because they can "go and see it" and possibly interact with the staff is made available to all and sundry...imagine what those technologies can do for other industries and earnings.

In the last 100 years or so, our ability to virtually experience destinations has increased with at first the radio, then TV,  followed by movies, videos etc. 

Rather than satisfying our desire to travel this technological creations increased it, which is why I believe VR and the metaverse will increase real travel.  Despite the bad events we need to attend, despite the complaints that business travel is a chore - we travel because we want to, rarely because we must.  

And it's going to be beautiful!!! 

We finally will see an evolution that will dwarf anything we have seen before. Fact is: People hate changing, but they love to escape. If there is one thing that Internet has shown us is that we are able to get away with anything and everything.  

Now how is that relevant for Hospitality and how will it leap frog hospitality? 

Imagine going for a drink in the trendiest club in Paris to then jump and go shopping in New York, being able to have a meeting anywhere an everywhere. Whilst phase 1 of metaverse will be relatively boring, what comes after will be amazing: immersive experiences thanks to haptic feedback. 

This means that we can take hospitality home and therefore your favorite beachfront can be where you are and the only reason to go to a destination is to get the "real" deal. 

Exciting times ahead indeed.