On Loudia Street, an alley perpendicular to Kifissias at the height of Ampelokipi, on the 5th floor of an apartment building from the past there is an apartment with a view to the future. In this small apartment, which is offered for short-term rental through the platform, the tenant can enjoy a special accommodation experience since if he likes any of the furniture, tables, mattresses, pillows, clothing or decoration, he can connect to its digital version apartment and with one or two clicks to buy it. Welcome to the first phygital (combination of physical and digital) airbnb of Athens.
It is about the collaboration of the travel services company CloudKeys with Pennie.gr. “The idea started during Covid” says Gifts of Pavlidou, founder of CloudKeys. “With everything closed and revenue coming from nowhere, we were thinking on the one hand about ways to bring revenue to the existing conditions and on the other hand how we will survive in the event that something like this happens again.” Several times, guests would ask where they could find a piece of furniture or decoration that they saw in their apartments. “I could understand they want to ask more but they don’t want to waste our time or even theirs. This is how we thought of creating showrooms inside real apartments where you can live normally and try the products in real everyday conditions. Everything fell into place and an enhanced stay experience is now available!” Today two such apartments are available for rent – or rather four since there is also their digital mirroring – where one can virtually browse and shop at any time.
Furniture and items that the prospective renter sees on a short-term rental property website are for sale!
The company plans to soon have visitors able to purchase digital or physical experiences. “In the same way” as Ms. Pavlidou mentions, “another accommodation could display works by local artists”. The technology existed – virtual tours are now offered by many hotels in Greece as well – but CloudKeys found a way to turn it into profits. It’s not self-evident. In the brave new world of virtual reality monetization is still the biggest bet.
Moptil executives had also faced difficulty in integrating their award-winning DIGIPAST application into the hotels, which, using VR, AR and AI technologies, offers high-level digital tours of 10 archaeological sites in Greece. “Finally we found a way and we have already applied it to the Grand Hyatt and Acropolis Select hotels” says Mr. Michalis Kokkinos, founder and CEO of Moptil. “We gave them special QR codes that the customer can scan and be taken to the App Store or Play Store and download our app. Through a technology that you can do affiliation, we can see from which hotel they were bought and thus give a commission. We have even agreed with the hotels that the amount goes to the people who work at the reception. We want to do the same for Airbnb.”
I spotted Michalis Kokkino while he was attending the 9th Our Ocean International Conference where the topic of climate change and how it will affect all aspects of our lives was discussed at length. Of course, the archaeological sites. “We don’t realize it, but there is no more direct way of protecting a monument than its 3D representation. It is directly related to its discharge”. A recent report by UNESCO and the Acropolis highlighted the usefulness of new digital tools in the development of a management plan for increased flows. One such tool is the COSMOTE CHRONOS developed by Moptil in collaboration with Cosmote on behalf of the Ministry of Culture, with which the visitor can admire the monument as it was in ancient times. “When you want to raise awareness about the protection of monuments, there is no better way.” Already the soon-to-be-expanded app has been downloaded by 350,000 users. “I cannot forget that when it was advertised 25,000 people for half an hour saw virtually the sanctuary of Artemis, which is not saved, and learned information about it.” Parallel worlds, parallel realities, mirroring each other.
Everything around is changing. The way we buy, consume, travel, experience. Stelios Ioannidis, a researcher at the University of the Aegean, has done the first PhD in Greece on how the use of the metaverse will change the tourism industry. “Right now the metaverse is in pieces. It is exactly what happened with the advent of the Internet in 2000 when only some very large companies made websites. When you told the professional to advertise online, he would tell you I have an advertisement, I have brochures, and they have my phone number. We all saw what change the internet brought, a similar one will bring the metaverse. It will replace the web pages. Already some very large companies such as Nike and Starbucks have made some pilot virtual environments for some of their stores. But the big bet is interoperability, being able to navigate from one metaverse to another.” “The issue of new technologies is their functionality,” he says to “K”. Philip Arvanitakis, creative director and founding executive of award-winning Gothenburg-based extended reality (XR) studio South North. “In the 25 years that I have been in the field, promotion and technology gallop at a much faster rate than we can absorb. We have the ability to do a lot of things, but they don’t have real-world implications.”
Recently South North Studio built a metaverse (the term was coined by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson in his novel “Snow Crush” in ΄93 and describes a virtual environment in which we move with avatars and is connected to the physical world) on behalf of a bank, a fictional city with a main shopping street where the bank’s store was located. “They told us it’s amazing but it doesn’t do us after they found out that nobody actually has VR Headsets. So we configured it and it works online within the bank’s website.” According to him, the equation of production costs in relation to the possibility of monetization still produces negative numbers. “When VR headsets are cheap enough to be in every home, that’s when the picture will change.”
THE Binazi Science is one of the few in Greece that has purchased VR headsets, virtual reality glasses. “The reason was gymnastics, but I ended up traveling around the world. I downloaded the interactive National Geographic app that allowed me to travel through space as well as time. I went to Machu Picchu with a camera and one moment I was in the ruins of the Inca houses and the next I was going back to that time, lying on their textiles and looking at the skulls of their ancestors that they decorate their rooms with.” Another training program had him running around San Francisco alongside the avatars of other athletes. “They are lived experiences. It’s not a lie. I feel today that I have already been to Peru. What I learned about it this way I couldn’t have learned from any documentary. It’s like a dream that you don’t remember very well but you can go back to whenever you want.”
THE Stelios Ioannidis, a researcher at the University of the Aegean, has done the first PhD in Greece on how the use of the metaverse will change the tourism industry. Based on his research, in the future:
-Tourists will be able to digitally browse destinations before making the final choice for their holiday, without relying on advertising, reviews or photos.
-They will be able to tour the hotel grounds, meet the staff and check out the room exactly before making any booking.
-They will be able to digitally participate in proposed activities in the destination to decide if they meet their expectations and if they are worth the time and money they will spend
-Tourists will be able to use NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to significantly reduce waiting time at airports and hotels, as the use automatically cross-references the information of the holders. “So a single NFT can be the plane ticket, the passport and the room key and the payment for all of them.”
– Personal data will be secured without accidental (or even deliberate) multiple leaks of personal data for the purpose of marketing.
-Experience while participating in activities will be upgraded, with the simultaneous use of augmented reality elements and real-time information for the user
-Photos/videos of landscapes, moments, people, experiences will be captured and it will be possible to restore them to the metaverse. “The avatar comes in and relives the memories, he doesn’t just see them.”
“The experience is very intense because the colors are more intense,” says Science. “You take off the glasses and you feel that the environment has faded away. I’ve found myself not wanting to go out because I’m wearing glasses.”
