It has on many occasions being brought to my attention that I am a bit of a geek, so you can imagine my delight to hear that a company has launched a virtual mall, which includes a floor full of travel shops. Yes, the high street shops are closing, but the virtual world is booming.
Hat tip: Travolution
Okay, so The Mall is a travel affiliate site, but, it is unique, and I like that. What disappoints me is the lack of content. I would like to read more information about the holiday provider, rather than an affiliate link through to its website. It is a start though and it would be great to see it develop into the travel version of Second Life.
Improving user experience
As it stands you have to ask yourself would you visit this site to search for a holiday, I would not because it is adding on extra clicks to the searching process. For fun though, I like, and hope that they development it and take comments on board.
Second life in Travel
They are a number of travel companies including Lonely Planet and STA Travel that have got involved in the Second Life virtual community. I wrote about this a year or so ago, and published some screenshots, yes, that’s me in the Hawaiian shirt.
I would be interested to hear from readers what they think about a virtual world where they enter a shop, search through brochures, and actually book a holiday in a 3D environment. I am undecided but it looks fun, but then I am a geek.
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Nick | 25 October, 2008 at 11:52 am
Darren, as a second life reg and business person, I do not think it will work. Several reasons (and yes linden can provided lots of data where it has worked, but they do not tell you about failures).
Second life has limitations to how it provides the information, how ever it would be good for tourist boards, embassies and official travel agents (ones like the Czech travel agency that are government run of funded). This of course has already happened. I can also see small specialist companies provided information on trips, ones that are different like GAP. With a low cost advertising and high value customers I can see some areas where it would work. For these companies with the information to hand 2 bookings a year would pay for the input. But to have a high street agency in a similar way we have in the UK, I can not see it working due to the range of information being to large.
But when it comes to travel agencies or tour companies selling things in rl it has it limitations. (I can see problems and STA has closed… and if you think about it, that says something because SL is aimed at there key market).
Rohan | 26 October, 2008 at 11:01 am
Personally, I would hate it. Nice idea though. I would not use the mall site as like you have said Darren it is adding on another set of clicks to find a holiday. If you had a search within the mall then yes I could see it working better.
Darren Cronian | 26 October, 2008 at 11:16 am
@ Nick
I suspect there’s potential security issues too. I know Second Life has had a number of attempting hackings over the years. I am surprised to hear about STA closing their virtual world, like you say it was obviously not getting them the return they thought.
I’m meeting Molly who writes for STA at the blogcamp next month so I will ask her why they closed it.
@ Rohan
It would not be for everyone, and it depends on if you get the return on investment. I think even with a search it would be quite cumbersome. The Mall site whilst I like the idea I really do think more thought needs to be put into adding content before anyone really uses it as a way to fin their holiday.
Tamara | 28 October, 2008 at 11:05 am
I took a trip around the shopping mall and was very disappointed in the functionality. when you go up to the stores you can’t then go right and left – you have to turn back to go forward again. Most of the affiliate shop links I tried didn’t work or took an age to click through.
I also didn’t like the limitations of it. It’s a bit like a good idea that hasn’t been thought through properly in terms of real usefulness.
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4 responses to “The future’s bright, the future is virtual travel”