A luxury travel company has launched a virtual reality holiday service for executives too busy to get away.
The concept, dubbed “A Journey around my room”, has been designed for people who struggle to achieve a work/life balance, providing all the benefits of travel without any of the inconveniences – such as the hassle of preparation, fear of flying and jet lag, not to mention the language barriers, unusual foods and people when you get there.
The company begins by confirming hotel reservations – just in case. They then create a “Brown Box” that the client will receive. This includes Oculus Rift VR headsets pre-loaded with destination footage, a week of menus and a Moroccan chef to faithfully recreate the street food of Fez at home, for example.
To titillate the senses you’ll receive a rare fragrance “Eau de Souq”. If the missed trip was to the Galapagos or a safari, after-hours access to a wildlife reserve might be arranged with an expert like Randal Keynes, Charles Darwin’s great grandson.
The company also provides clothing bearing the fragrance of the destination, souvenirs, photoshopped snaps, drone footage of “where they were”, anecdotes, postcards sent to friends, geo-tagged social media posts and signed copy of Pierre Bayard’s “How to talk about places you’ve never been”.
Philippe Brown, founder of Brown + Hudson, said: “The idea was inspired by a client who would commission us to design the most incredible trips, pay and then cancel at the last minute, to the disappointment of their family.
“So we decided to bring the destination to them.”
Busy executives who want their colleagues to think they are travelling, when in fact they are catching up on work at home, have been flocking to “Journey around my room”. They hold confirmed hotel reservations so that if someone calls them, reception can say that “X is at the pool”.
Surely it’s a poor PR stunt? But then you never know.