Poppr

Avoriaz is a French mountain resort in the heart of the Portes du Soleil. It was once built on a shelf high above the town of Morzine, a widely known skiing town with lifts dating back to the ’30s! Today, Avoriaz is one of the major French ski destinations with top rated ski & snowboard slopes. One of the principal owners of Avoriaz is the tourism and real estate development company Pierre & Vacances, we were of course very excited when we had the opportunity of working together to virtualize the entire area. With this virtual visit, we create trust by not tricking the eye with misleading pictures, we highlight the USP’s of this area in an immersive way, with the aim of converting visitors into bookings. Virtual visits are a powerful marketing and sales channel for the travel industry. It creates trust, enticing visual storytelling, and emotional response, perfect to add conversion paths. We all know the wide-angle pictures of accommodations and swimming pools, only to arrive in a broom closet and a dirty 2×2 hole with water. 360° websites hide nothing and create a far larger sense of trust with visitors. Conversion through virtual visits in travel is significantly higher than their static counterparts. We measure everything and connect to booking- and CRM systems to get a sense of ROI and conversion. Some numbers A/B testing over 40 million visitors gave us these quite impressive results: Engagement + 386% Conversion + 50% Average booking value + 36% Read More

Bringing live-guided immersive virtual tours to a global audience Jewish history education plays a crucial role at the US-based EVJCC community centre. As part of its Holocaust education efforts, this not-for-profit organisation used to host virtual guided tours of Auschwitz using traditional video conferencing and screen-sharing, under the Six Million Voices (SMV) brand name.  Recognizing the inherent limitations of this approach, the EVJCC reached out to our team to develop a better and more scalable alternative that would be able to host different educational tours. The idea for Six Million Voices was clear from the outset: to revamp the existing virtual tour experience of Auschwitz-Birkenau, making it more accessible to a broader audience while enhancing the overall experience and preserving the historical memory of the Holocaust. We wanted to faithfully replicate the essence of an in-person visit to the memorial site. To convert this vision into a tangible concept and platform, we turned to our tried-and-tested discovery phase. We conducted a thorough technical analysis to outline the required features and functionalities for the new bespoke tour platform.  Key criteria included a user-friendly content management system (CMS), empowering the EVJCC’s content editors to add new material themselves.  At the same time, the platform had to be intuitive for both tour participants and guides. Individual presentation links to different tour time slots were another prerequisite. The custom platform is built on Meteor using the React framework. Key integrations include JW Player for video content and Vonage for direct video and audio communication between tour guides and visitors.  We’ve also incorporated a robust chat environment, offering both group chats and private messaging features.  Individual presentation sessions can be organised with unique meeting links, which are distributed to a separate ticketing and payment platform. This ensures that visitors receive the correct one-time access code for their selected time slot and corresponding virtual tour. Custom virtual tour platforms play a crucial role in shaping the future of education. Tour guides have the flexibility to take full control and adapt the tour to the needs of their audience, while providing the opportunity for direct interaction.  Simultaneously, premium audiovisual quality is ensured by directly streaming all content to visitors, eliminating the need for cumbersome screen-sharing via a traditional video feed.  The platform is designed with updates in mind: integrations with realtime 3D spaces and 360° video are on the roadmap for the next version. Read More

Creating a cutting-edge and tailor-made immersive website for a virtual film museum? Right up our alley. US-based film professor and curator Richard Suchenski was looking to launch a subscription platform that would blend historically significant films with virtual exhibitions focusing on key themes and figures in the film industry. In the client’s words, the main aim of Film Secession was to create new ways of exploring the ideas that shaped filmmakers across different cinematic eras. The goal was to craft an online platform with a museum-like feel, showcasing historically significant films, archived materials and interviews with directors and other cinema experts. Adapting this cinematic grandeur into a captivating experience for the small screen required an integrated approach that combined technical expertise and a comprehensive artistic vision. Our art director set to work on a visual platform style that seamlessly aligned with the project’s overarching theme. Drawing inspiration from the art deco sets of legendary art and set director Cedric Gibbons, he created an inviting, yet minimalistic and modern concept. The design offers a welcoming atmosphere as visitors navigate from one virtual museum hall to the next, exploring all the content of the digital museum. Our team handled all visual branding aspects, ranging from conceptualization and logos to typography. The platform uses custom 3D modelling to enable a content layer on top of a 3D environment. In contrast to SaaS development platforms such as Roblox or Meta’s Horizon Worlds, our custom development approach allows us to fine-tune every little detail to the needs of the immersive universe that projects like this deserve. On top of the development architecture that combines gated and non-gated content, seamless integration with Stripe facilitates smooth processing of subscription payments. In addition, we integrated streaming with JW Player for video and added geoblocking for select video material subject to country restrictions. Detailed usage analytics provide statistical insight that helps to identify opportunities for content expansion and improvement. Through Film Secession, we transformed a passion project into a solid business concept and fully monetizable platform featuring valuable video content tailored for a global niche audience. Combining custom development with a best-of-breed approach for external integrations, the virtual museum delivers an elevated brand experience. Read More