US hotel demonstrates marketing power of virtual tours
Colorado’s Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel is aiming to make itself the number one choice for meeting planners, and is using a 360 tour of the hotel to boost its visibility.
“Our hotel offers one of a very few virtual hotel tours within Starwood Hotels & Resorts North American division,” said Brandon Taugner, director of the hotel’s IT Department.
“Providing an exceptional virtual tour means that clients and meeting planners are able to tour the hotel from the convenience of an office, sometimes located thousands of miles away. The real estate business has done this for years and it’s a huge benefit to our customers,” he added.
The Sheraton has used a 360 virtual tour as part of its marketing strategy, covering around 135,000 square feet of meeting space as well as guest rooms. It is viewable in a full screen, interactive, high definition format.
As well as navigating within a room, clients can move to adjacent rooms and also click on hotspots to gain information or external weblinks.
“We recently booked a significant meeting with the help of the virtual tour,” said Maria Maxwell, the Sheraton Denver Downtown’s director of sales and marketing.
“At the last minute, the client was unable to travel to Denver, yet needed to book a meeting. Our sales manager was able to virtually walk the client through the space and close the business.”
