The file above is from a conversation on ABC radio, The Breakfast Show with Charlotte and Jamie, about virtual reality tourism.  I hope you enjoy listening to it.

Virtual Reality Tourism has the potential to shake up the travel industry in a lot of good ways.

I had the opportunity last year with my son to be the first to experience the Virtual Reality Roller Coaster at Legoland Malaysia and the combination of reality and virtual reality made an entirely new sensory experience that was exciting and wonderful.

Over the years, I’ve described to people on radio, to students in classrooms and to my friends and family the experience of trekking the jungles of Borneo, retracing the footsteps of Australian and British Prisoners of War.  While slipping on a pair of goggles in the comfort of your sofa will not give you a sense of exhaustion and emotion, it will give you an experience that is different to listening to reading.  Seeing in your goggles the clinging vines, sucking mud, slippery slopes and rocks will inform your mind and help create new ways to understand a story you have been told or read about.

Virtual Reality tourism may create a whole new binge opportunity.  Rather than spending the whole day watching every series of a favourite tv show, you could scuba dive all day long and all around the world, or wander the great museums of the world.

The cultural sensitivity of many areas may create amazing virtual reality opportunities, such as climbing Uluru.

Virtual reality tourism will help those with disability and affordability issues to join in experiences they may otherwise not be able to do.  Virtual reality tourism will enable the tourism industry to offer more, on a scale that is inclusive and safe.