VR and its effect on the travel and tourism industry is in its infancy. Many travel web sites have desktop virtual reality "tours" of exotic locales or layouts of cruise ships. Yet, in the coming years, VR will profoundly affect the travel industry in ways only heretofore imagined in Hollywood movies. For those not able to afford multi-thousand dollar trips, or for those not physically able to go on adventurous vacations, virtual vacations might be their answer. Like in Total Recall, a regular Joe will walk into a VR Travel Agency and choose among hundreds of different trips: a safari perhaps, maybe a rainforest trip high in the jungle canopy, or even a trip to the Moon. Then after selecting and paying for his trip, Joe will then strap on the appropriate hardware for the exact tele-sensory emotions and be off.

This new type of leisure activity may cause heated competition from the "real thing" and those travel agencies currently in business. There will be advertisements courting you to travel the old-fashioned way and actually physically going on vacation. Then there will be the new guys offering all sorts of virtual escapes from your mundane world. Of course, many travel agencies will bridge the gap and offer both, perhaps selling packages of exotic trips combining part on location and part in cyberspace.

Travel related links:

http://www.armchair-travel.com/