Creating a Virtual 4D Travel Experience

BETHESDA, MD - In its journey to explore the future of travel, Marriott Hotels is taking an unprecedented leap into virtual reality by teleporting travelers to the beaches of Hawaii and downtown London.

The brand partnered with Academy Award-winning Framestore to create Marriott Hotel's virtual travel experience, giving consumers a fully immersive, 4-D sensory experience based in Oculus Rift technology.

An industry pioneer, Marriott Hotels is embracing innovative technologies to redefine the future of travel for generations to come. And now, travel enthusiasts can see, hear and feel what it's like to be in destinations halfway across the globe and at Marriott Hotels of the future - all within its traveling teleporter coming to eight cities across the U.S. beginning in New York.

The groundbreaking program is anchored by the Marriott Hotels virtual travel experience Teleporter - a phone booth-like structure that takes cues from iconic science fiction books and movies. The Teleporter features the Oculus Rift DK2 virtual reality headset, wireless headphones and suite of onboard 4-D sensory elements.

To create a virtual travel experience that truly feels like being there, Marriott Hotels turned to its partners, video effects and creative content studio Framestore and experiential marketing agency Relevent, to pioneer several new virtual reality innovations. This included developing a new, unparalleled technique for capturing 3D, 360-degree live-action video, and then mixing that video with photoreal CGI and 4-D elements such as heat, wind and mist.

The result is an unprecedented depth of immersion, a virtual reality experience that delivers the feeling of actually traveling to Hawaii's Wai'anapanapa Black Sand Beach in Maui and London, seen from the dizzying heights of Tower 42. To learn more and see a behind-the-scenes video of the making of the virtual reality travel experience, go to TravelBrilliantly.com/our-innovations/oculus-get-teleported .

Marriott Hotels is pioneering the use of innovative technologies that will transform the guest experience to heights unseen in the current reality experience in unprecedented ways, said Michael Dail, vice president, Marriott Hotels Brand Marketing. Marriott seized on virtual reality and teleportation to give the next generation of travelers the clear cut notion that more amazing travel experiences are coming and to encourage them to co-create the future of travel with us on TravelBrilliantly.com, where their best ideas enter Marriott's innovation pipeline. Together, we are pushing the limits of what is possible.

During the Marriott Virtual Travel Experience, guests enter the Teleporter, where they will put on virtual reality headsets and headphones to be completely immersed in a virtual world. From there, they will visit a virtual version of a new Marriott Greatroom lobby, and then virtually travel to a black sand beach in Maui, Hawaii and to the top of a skyscraper in downtown London, England. While traveling, 4-D elements kick in - the feeling of the warm sun on your skin, breeze in your hair, rumble of waves under foot and ocean spray in your face - to make the experience feel extremely lifelike.

The Teleporter is touring eight select Marriott properties from September to November, offering hotel guests and the public the chance to teleport themselves at Marriott Hotels in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco.

LINK:	http://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/Web-Exclusives/2014/Creating-a-Virtual...
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