Information Technologies and Applications for the Tourism Services Sphere

Abstract

The article considers definition of the augmented and virtual reality, a virtual tour, discusses the fields of practical implementation of integrated projects, analyses software and hardware necessary to develop and view virtual tours. The most widely used professional and educational open-sourced platforms are listed, their differences are highlighted. The process of the virtual tour creation is decomposed. The economic efficiency of “virtual” consumption in the tourism industry is substantiated referring to the contemporary profile of a common traveller, namely during the period of economic recession (as proved by the statistics of international tourism indicators – the number of visits, the GDP impact and employment rates). The statistics of browsers' use worldwide and in Ukraine is given; the advantages of the HTML5 platform are grounded compared with the retired Flash technology (still used with the obsolete equipment). The demand for pre-project estimation of hardware and data transmission channels in a target country is proved on the example of Ukraine.