This year's hottest destination: cyberspace
Posted by Ibiza Party, Monday 19 March 2007 at 16:44 PM :: Clubbing :: #59 :: rss
No passport is required, the flights are free and there's no carbon footprint - welcome to the brave new world of virtual holidays. Gemma Bowes books a package tour of cyberspace and asks: could this be the new Ibiza ?
I'm ambling along the beach, palm trees looming through the dusky haze of sunset. I can just make out some lights through the trees and, as I draw closer, I realise it is a beach club, with dozens of gorgeous people in outlandish clothes dancing on the sand.
After joining them for a while, I follow a sign for a treehouse campsite and find a stylish open-air lodge, with verandas built up into the trees and bean bags and designer chairs round open fires. I recline for a while before Mario, my tour operator, says he wants to buy me some designer clothes before taking me skiing. Then he'll take me to see some historical sites and meet some celebrities.
It seems I've stumbled upon my dream holiday. What's more, it's free, totally eco-friendly and we don't have any long coach transfers between the sites. We can simply teleport, or indeed fly.
Mario Gerosa's tours are a little different to your average package holiday. He's the world's first 'virtual tour operator', offering holidays in cyberspace through his company, Synthravels, to online 3D, interactive worlds, which together have around 20 million users worldwide.
Like a combination of a computer game and a chat room, these complex digital worlds are downloaded over the internet and allow people to explore the graphic environments and interact with each other via an avatar - a digital version of themselves. While many log on to make friends, as they would in a chat room, businesses are realising the potential to reach a huge and growing audience. The most famous virtual world, Second Life, has attracted 4.6 million members since it was developed in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, and now big corporations are using it to contact customers and market their goods. IBM holds meetings there, American Apparel sells virtual versions of its clothes, DJs and bands perform live online and there is a virtual Reuters office with a hack to report on Second Life events.
Now the first 'virtual holidays' to this and other digital worlds are being offered by Synthravels, which Mario launched last October. He says he's not a IT bod; his background is as a travel writer for Conde Nast Traveller magazine in Italy and he's now a reporter for the Architectural Digest in Milan by day, running his virtual tours in his spare time.
I'm ambling along the beach, palm trees looming through the dusky haze of sunset. I can just make out some lights through the trees and, as I draw closer, I realise it is a beach club, with dozens of gorgeous people in outlandish clothes dancing on the sand.
After joining them for a while, I follow a sign for a treehouse campsite and find a stylish open-air lodge, with verandas built up into the trees and bean bags and designer chairs round open fires. I recline for a while before Mario, my tour operator, says he wants to buy me some designer clothes before taking me skiing. Then he'll take me to see some historical sites and meet some celebrities.
It seems I've stumbled upon my dream holiday. What's more, it's free, totally eco-friendly and we don't have any long coach transfers between the sites. We can simply teleport, or indeed fly.
Mario Gerosa's tours are a little different to your average package holiday. He's the world's first 'virtual tour operator', offering holidays in cyberspace through his company, Synthravels, to online 3D, interactive worlds, which together have around 20 million users worldwide.
Like a combination of a computer game and a chat room, these complex digital worlds are downloaded over the internet and allow people to explore the graphic environments and interact with each other via an avatar - a digital version of themselves. While many log on to make friends, as they would in a chat room, businesses are realising the potential to reach a huge and growing audience. The most famous virtual world, Second Life, has attracted 4.6 million members since it was developed in 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, and now big corporations are using it to contact customers and market their goods. IBM holds meetings there, American Apparel sells virtual versions of its clothes, DJs and bands perform live online and there is a virtual Reuters office with a hack to report on Second Life events.
Now the first 'virtual holidays' to this and other digital worlds are being offered by Synthravels, which Mario launched last October. He says he's not a IT bod; his background is as a travel writer for Conde Nast Traveller magazine in Italy and he's now a reporter for the Architectural Digest in Milan by day, running his virtual tours in his spare time.
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