Next time you stay at a Marriott, you may want to try ‘VRoom Service’. The virtual reality room service is a new initiative that Marriott, with help from Samsung, is trying out at certain hotels - starting with the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.
Users get a briefcase in their room with a Samsung Gear VR headset. When they put it on, they immediately get access to three so-called VR postcards.
“Maybe they have heard about virtual reality but haven’t experienced it, so this really opens up and gives consumers the opportunity to try it firsthand,” says Michael Dail of Marriott Hotels. “The stories are really a firsthand account of these travelers’ experiences in three different locations. We have Rwanda, we have the streets of Beijing, we have the mountaintops of the Andes, and really these different consumers are giving their perspective on their personal and professional inspirations of what motivates them to travel and what they take away from their trip and how it opens their mind."
The travelers featured in those vignettes say they are pleasantly surprised at how well virtual reality is able to replicate the sights, sounds and feel of each of those locations.
One of those vignettes focuses on Alexis Gallivant of Blue Marble Ice Cream, who partnered with a cooperative of women drummers in Butare, Rwanda to help open the town’s first ice cream shop.
“I felt like I was transported back to that very day and that very setting,” Gallivant says. “You could actually feel the joy and exuberance of the drummers and kind of almost, I almost felt like I could feel the cool air of the Rwandan mountains. It was really remarkable how close to reality it actually was."
VRoom Service will be available for a couple weeks at the Marriott Marquis and the London Park Lane Marriott. The hotel chain is deciding now which hotels will get it next, as well as other potential uses for in-room VR.