‘Like going to the beach’: How new technology is bringing Hilton Head to your living room

Andrew Loy put in his headphones as he strolled down South Forest Beach.

The Pennsylvania native, a regular island visitor for over 30 years, had grown to love the waves washing ashore and the powerful, yet relaxing bass of water breaking against land. He and his family visit annually, and he was married at Palmetto Dunes.

Still, he couldn’t feel the loose sand between his toes or the Atlantic’s fresh breeze. And when he removed his headphones, the chorus of gulls and water quieted. It wasn’t a perfect experience, but Loy said it was still remarkable to feel so close to Hilton Head Island from the comfort of his home southwest of Pittsburgh.

Loy recently bought a Meta Quest 2 virtual reality headset for his son. While experimenting with the gadget’s different features and apps, Loy found an app called Wander, which allows users to “travel” to landmarks across the world using imagery from Google StreetView and user-submitted data.

VR headsets like the Meta Quest 2 create the illusion of 3D environments by placing special lenses between a screen and the user’s eyes, distorting the images to appear three-dimensional.

The images presented can be generated through 3D art or, as in the Wander app, real-life images taken with 360-degree cameras allowing users to “look around” the environment while wearing the headset. Some programs also let the user interact with their environment with handheld controllers.

“I have dreams about Hilton Head,” Loy said. “The first thing we did when I downloaded that app, I went straight to the island and it was like going to the beach ... It’s really neat, I’m definitely going to keep doing it.”

There are other locations on the island and even out into the water Loy plans to see in Wander, he said, although he admits the VR experience isn’t a replacement for an in-person visit.

“No, obviously it’s not being there, but it’s damn close if you’re stuck somewhere else,” Loy said.

VR’s expanding potential

Despite virtual reality’s impressive growth projections, with some forecasting a potential $50 billion industry by 2030, the tools needed to capture high-quality imagery for VR visuals and the headsets themselves are still fairly expensive. Kits can range from around $300 up to $1,800.

Frederic Dimanche, director of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, said VR tech is on the precipice of becoming far more accessible, though.

“I think we can expect this to take off in the next few years as the price of technology will go down. We’ve seen this being used by travel and tourism professionals,” Dimanche said. “Increasingly, you will find destinations, you will find cruise companies, you will find resorts, you may find hotels, developing videos that are to be used by users of the virtual reality headset.”

The benefit of a more immersive “try before you buy” experience, Dimanche said, is a boon to marketing popular tourists destinations like Hilton Head and hospitality professionals in those places. Real estate groups could also take advantage of the tech.

“That’s the main limitation when you buy an expensive trip, or a cruise or home or resort or something like this, is that, ‘I’m spending X amount of dollars on it, but I don’t know exactly what it will be like,’” Dimanche said. “Virtual reality is going to narrow that gap.”

The Hilton Head-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, the island’s designated marketing organization responsible for promoting travel to Hilton Head, isn’t currently using VR to market the island. The chamber’s vice president of communications, Charlie Clark, said the chamber is “taking a look” at the tech.

Loy agreed that the opportunity to virtually tour different resorts on Hilton Head, or in any other tourist destination, would be an enticing option for visitors like himself.

“I could see one of the travel places there setting up a VR tour, if you’re thinking about going to Hilton Head or even if you’ve been there, to see a different place on the island,” Loy said. “I even think people would pay for that, to an extent, with a guided tour or something.”

Good alternative to being there

Hayley Stainton, a tourism academic and author at Tourism Teacher, said virtual tourism is also a good alternative for those who may be physically unable to travel.

Some developers have tapped into VR tourism for education, too, with Wander integrating Wikipedia into some notable areas in its own app, and companies like Flyover Zone offering ways to visit historic cities like Rome — both as they exist today, and how they existed years before.

Stainton said in Australia, virtual tourism saw success when travel dropped off during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. People interested in visiting the country tuned in to monitor live feeds of different wildlife. Areas with abundant nature such as Hilton Head could take advantage of virtual offerings as well.

“There’s a lot of scope for that kind of thing with nature, for example, going into nature and seeing things that you wouldn’t be able to get up close in that way with,” Stainton said, ”or going underwater, if people don’t like diving, they’re not good swimmers, or it makes them feel nervous.”

Much like Loy, Dimanche doesn’t anticipate VR tourism overtaking physical travel — but the industry’s future growth is promising.

“It will not replace the thrill of traveling, of meeting people, of smelling and all these kinds of things,” Dimanche said. “But it is an alternative, and I think it will benefit a lot of people.”