Synthravels.com : l’agence de voyages pour les mondes virtuels. Interview de Mario Gerosa
Les Mondes Virtuels vous connaissez ? Second Life vous connaissez ? Ces univers virtuels et électroniques sont devenu une part de notre vie du 21 siècle.
Alors pourquoi pas faire découvrir ces mondes virtuels et proposer les services d'une agence de voyages virtuels.
C'est ce que propose Mario Gerosa avec son agence virtuelle Synthravels.com
Dans cet interview, Mario nous explique le fonctionnement de Synthravels.com mais nous offre aussi un regard pertinent sur le Travel 2.0 et les tendances qu'il observe avec la dynamique de ces mondes virtuels où les plus grandes entreprises (IBM, Starwood,…) occupent de plus en plus l'espace virtuel a des fins marketing et commercial.
J'ai beaucoup appris lors de cet interview. Merci Mario !
>Mario, can you tell us who you are?
I am a journalist who has a long experience in travel. I worked for many years as senior editor of Condé Nast Traveller Italy and for the most renowned travel magazines. I am a member of the GIST, the association of the Italian Travel Journalists, and of the OMNSH, a French association of video games researchers
>You work for a great and very original travel site, synthravels.com., Can you tell us the story and some fact about it?
I am very fond of imaginary places since I was young. Now I am 43 years old but already in 1988 I made an exhibition about the imaginary places of A la recherché du temps perdu, the masterwork of Marcel Proust. In particular, I was intrigued by the Grand Hotel de Balbec, a fictional place created by the writer. Then I visited many imaginary places in videogames, from Myst to Riven, from the laboratories of Half-Life to the dark corridors of Doom and Quake. And with the virtual worlds I discovered a new frontier, with extraordinary places, huge territories to discover, created day by day and rich of different cultures.
One year ago I had the idea of a travel agency for virtual tours. I thought that there are many people who could like to see these virtual places but have not the time to make their avatars very skilled or to discover these places without a guide. So, after a long search, I met Matteo Esposito, CEO of the Imille, a Milan based new media agency, and we created Synthravels.
>Can you give us some outline about your goals with synthravels.com.!
I would like to create more focused tours. Now we have many guides. We have to select the most trusty and the ones who really like to do this kind of experience. Then, we could think about tours dedicated to single aspects of these worlds, for example, the art galleries in Second Life or the photographic safari in Entropia Universe.
> Who use synthravels.com? Any special profil and country for synthravels.com group & community users?
For now, it's early to define a profile. I would say anyway that some big companies are interested in this kind of tours. You know, now there are major companies entering in SL and they need to visit that world, to understand which are its potential. So I would say we have two different profiles: the curious traveller and the businessmen.
>Any advises for people who start to use synthravels.com and Second Life as well !
You must be patient. We are just introducing a feedback rating system for the guides and so it may happen that you do not find immediately a guide who answers your request to visit a world. But things will get better in the future. In fact we would need to be supported by a sponsor to offer even better services.
> synthravels.com is like a Virtual Travel Agency but do you plan to organise real meeting with your customers in the real life?
It could happen. We could arrange and organize a trip in real life, before making it. It could be useful to understand better the needs of the customers.
> What are the main advantage to use synthravels.com ?
If you want to see the best places in a virtual world, you have to spend some days or months in front of the screen. But not everybody can do it. Some have not the time but want to see these wonderful places. Synthravels id for them. It is a more democratic way to consider the synthetic universes: they are not only for hard gamers.
>What are the top 5 for your Virtual Travel ?
I will tell you mine:
-Pepper Park (Neocron)
-Mercy Island (City of Villains)
-Zychion Citadel (Entropia Universe)
-Suffugium (Second Life)
-Kowloon (Matrix online)
>Internet is going faster and we talk now about Web 2.0 and Travel 2.0. What do you think about this evolution in the tourism & hotel market place ? Word-of-mouth marketing and User Generated Content are the big trends for Travel 2.0 ?
I think the virtual worlds offer great possibilities for the Real Life tourism marketplace. I think that in the future we could think to re-create some places of real life in virtual worlds. Imagine a street seen with Google Earth: you have the real people moving and you move with your avatar. And people in RL see an hologram of your avatar. It's sci-fi, but it could be.
Then, to be strictly related to tourism, I think that hotels could test new and old structures in SL, like Starwood already did, theme parks could enter virtual worlds and famous highlights of RL could also be presented in SL or other worlds.
But I think that also the tourism in virtual places that do not exist in RL will increase.
>We see important impact of news technologies (RSS, AJAX, podcast, blog, socialnetworking tools, Google mashup,Vidéo etc), what is your point of view ?
That changes our vision of tourism. It will be more and more a custom made tourism, with travels created for every single customer.
>What about your developpment and project for synthravels.com?
I would like that our agency became stronger, supported by a venture capitalist who believes in it.
> Can DMO's and Tourism Board become synthravels.com Partners?.
Yes, it could be interesting, since I believe that we are going towards the convergence of virtual worlds and real life. Real and virtual will be more and more connected and similar operations will become the liaison between the two plans of experience, reality and virtual worlds.
>What are your personal taste for:
>Travel:
I like places that I expect to be very different from my culture. I would have liked to have seen the former USSR before the fall of the Berlin wall. I would like to go to Japan and to Arizona, places that I imagine to be very different from what I am accustomed to see.
>Travel destination:
Disneyland, Odessa (to see the stair of the Potemkin battleship movie), Cairo, the Moon
>Hotel :
The Gleneagles in Scotland, the Metropole in Bruxelles, The Paramount in New York, the Marriott in Petra
>Business:
That's a question of people more than places. And to find the right people to work is more difficult than to find a good place
>You have the micro
I would like to create an entirely multimedial virtual world, where one can walk with his avatar, then to log off and see what is happening in this world watching the tv, and then read about it in a book written in real time by someone who describes the life there.
September 28th, 2007 at 5:45 am
Mario,
ne pourrait on pas créer dans la RL un monde inspiré de la virtualité..(ile encore inconnue, difficile d’accès, avec plein de mystères….
avec une architecture novatrice pour l’hébergement ?
bravo pour ton site
yves MOINE
consultant et ex agent de voyages