Regal Hotels plans metaverse convention centre as it bets that avatar-based business conferences will upend video meetings
- Regal is preparing to launch a virtual convention centre whereby large-scale industry conferences can be live-streamed to attendees
- Hotels operator says it is in discussions with organiser of a leading sustainability conference slated to take place in Hong Kong this year
Corporate events and industry conferences will likely operate in a hybrid mode in a post-Covid world whereby live events will be broadcast simultaneously into the metaverse, according to the head of Regal Hotels, which is preparing to host virtual events in The Sandbox.
It is preparing to launch a virtual convention centre whereby large-scale industry conferences could be live-streamed to the attendees, and unlike online conferencing platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft’s Teams, participants would be able to network and meet new business partners in the form of avatars, she said.
“The format of corporate meetings and conferences will not be either online or offline, but will take on a hybrid model whereby it will also enable participants to continue with their networking,” said Lo. “The metaverse has made it possible to engage attendees in ways that are not yet available on [existing] video conference platforms.”
Regal Hotels said it is in discussions with the organiser of a “leading sustainability conference” slated to take place at a convention centre later this year on broadcasting part of the sessions at its virtual conference centre.
3D, avatar-based business conferences have been touted as one of the use cases for the metaverse, which refers to an immersive online universe created by the convergence of physical, augmented and virtual reality.