State-owned flag carrier, Qatar Airways’ QVerse, a novel virtual reality (VR) experience for visitors to the airline’s website, has won the FTE Airline Pioneer Awards at the Future Travel Experience (FTE) Global 2022 Awards ceremony.
The experience allows users to virtually tour and navigates different aspects of the travel experience, including the Premium check-in area at Hamad International Airport and Qatar Airways’ cabin interiors, by using their own personal electronic devices.
The awards recognize airlines and airports that have made significant efforts to transform the passenger experience through innovation.
FTE said in a statement that these efforts include new cabin designs, new sustainable energy resources, parallel reality, NFT, and diving into new areas such as the metaverse.
According to the statement, “The carrier also became the first global airline to introduce a MetaHuman cabin crew offering a digital interactive customer experience. The experience was developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, the world’s most advanced real-time 3D creation tool, and MetaHuman Creator, a cloud-based app for creating high-fidelity digital humans.”
The 3D human model named ‘Sama’ offers an interactive customer experience through engagement with the user, taking them on a virtual journey of discovery while presenting the unique features in both the Business and Economy Class cabins.
Furthermore, iGA Istanbul Airport secured an FTE Airport Pioneer Award for its artificial intelligence (AI) and metaverse exploration efforts.
As per the statement, “Aiming to transform the time spent at Istanbul Airport, iGA introduced a new service featuring Augmented Reality (AR) technology, providing passengers with information about the airport’s retail outlets by accompanying them around the International Terminal shopping area.”
