ATPCO and Renacen bring virtual tours to flight shopping
ATPCO partners with Renacen to offer 3D Virtual Tours, enhancing flight shopping with immersive cabin visuals and boosting seat merchandising.
ATPCO has announced a new partnership with 3D SeatMapVR by Renacen, the travel industry's leader in 3D seat map technology, that brings an immersive shopping experience to life via interactive virtual tours. This collaboration will provide travelers an unprecedented look inside an aircraft during the booking process, arming consumers with more insight into the type of seat, its features, and the layout a particular aircraft offers.
Virtual Tours, the newest in Routehappy Visuals, is now available to all Routehappy airline subscribers who also subscribe to Renacen. This partnership enables Virtual Tours to be seamlessly integrated and distributed to any channel subscribed to ATPCO's Routehappy. ATPCO also enables Virtual Tours for airlines working with their own 360-degree content providers, offering full flexibility to use the partner of their choice. Corporate booking tool AmTrav, part of the TravelPerk Group, is the first sales channel to integrate the content and offer this innovative display and enhanced visualization to its users.
'Virtual Tours represent a major leap in airline merchandising, transforming how consumers shop for flights,' said Thomas Gregorson, ATPCO's Chief Strategy Officer. Through collaboration with innovative companies like Renacen and early adopters like AmTrav, travelers can now interact with and explore cabins and seating arrangements before making their purchase. Not only do Routehappy Visuals enhance traveler confidence, but they also enable airlines and sales channels to deliver a more engaging shopping experience while boosting ancillary revenue opportunities such as seat and cabin upgrades.'
AmTrav's Routehappy integration already includes Renacen's Virtual Tours for Gulf Air, Iberia, Iberia Express, Hawaiian Airlines' 787s, most United Airlines flights, and Delta Air Lines' Airbus A330-900neo and A321 aircraft. Additional airlines and aircraft types are set to be added soon.
'Savvy travelers are obsessed with where they sit on a plane,' said Jeff Klee, CEO of AmTrav. 'At AmTrav, we want to make sure we equip those travelers with enough information to understand which option will be the most comfortable so they can make the most well-informed decisions. To that end, Virtual Tours are an absolute game-changer, giving travelers amazing visibility into what they'll experience. Routehappy continues to be one of the most positive forces for good in airline retailing.'
Renacen CEO Diego de Alcalá Cachero Rodríguez added, 'Airlines have increasingly complex seating offers that have historically been difficult for consumers to visualize. Our technology has allowed flight shoppers on airline websites to see exactly what they will pay for during the seat selection process for some time, and our partnership with ATPCO will expand that reach, which means more airlines, sales channels and consumers will have access to best-in-kind cabin tours.'
In 2024, ATPCO's shopper survey revealed that 83% of flight shoppers prefer 360-degree cabin tours when selecting a seat or cabin. As consumer expectations for interactive and visually engaging content continue to rise, Virtual Tours positions ATPCO and its partners at the forefront of modern airline retailing.
The introduction of Virtual Tours supports ATPCO's focus on improving an airline's ability to merchandise seats and our ongoing commitment to innovation in airline merchandising. Virtual Tours reduces the burdens on airlines by utilizing existing content partnerships and eliminating the need to create and maintain their own immersive visuals. Sales channels benefit from consistent, high-quality content that enhances platform engagement, while flight shoppers gain the confidence to make informed booking decisions.
This is the first phase of collaboration with Renacen to explore the value of Virtual Tours within the complete customer journey. ATPCO is actively collaborating with additional sales channels and airlines to unveil more tours in the coming months, expanding the reach and impact of Virtual Tours.
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