An extended reality (XR) bus tour kicked off this week allowing participants to see an erupting volcano and Hawaii’s coral reefs up close and personal with XR headsets — all while staying in Waikiki.
XploreRide’s bus tour has become the first of its kind in Hawaii and opens the door for other business in Hawaii’s visitor industry to tap into the expanding global virtual tourism industry. The “Virtual Tourism – Global Strategic Business Report” Opens in a new tab released earlier this year values the virtual tourism industry at $8.8 billion in 2024, and says it’s expected to reach $31.6 billion by 2030 — due to a compound annual growth rate of nearly 24%.
XR is an umbrella term for all immersive technologies including VR (virtual reality). Its advantage to destinations like Hawaii is that technology can minimize visitor impacts by helping to reduce everything from air travel’s carbon footprint to rental cars on the road as well as people at popular natural and cultural sites.
However, an emerging concern as this technology ramps up is whether all usage is appropriate, especially for a destination like Hawaii, where nature and culture are key and authenticity is important.
XploreRide, a collaboration led by HIS, in partnership with NAKED and SYNESTHESIAS, an IT venture from the University of Tokyo, officially launched on Tuesday.
Cultural Advisor Kumu Blaine Kamalani Kia who designed the the XploreRide experience with his son Kikau Kia, 19, led a ribbon-cutting ceremony and blessed the tour bus with ti leaves before passengers boarded. Kia said that the pair provided their own recordings of chants in Hawaiian that are used throughout the tour and brainstormed visual ideas.
“When you’re in the bus, the idea is to raise that consciousness and to awaken your senses,” the elder Kia said at the ceremony.
A virtual glowing stingray “Hawaiian guardian spirit” narrates the 45-minute journey along a 6.4-mile loop down Kalakaua Avenue and around Diamond Head.
Animated whales and dolphins swim outside the windows, while colorful fish fill the bus as it travels. At other points, the natural world disappears entirely as passengers are transported to an XR underwater scene, above the clouds in a rainbow filled sky, or to the site of an erupting volcano as lava rains down.
As the bus passes landmarks like Waikiki Beach, “mana stones” appear in front of passengers, which they can collect using hand-tracking technology in their XR headsets. Each stone triggers a visual text box with information relevant to the location.
“All of these elements are meant to educate everyone about the Hawaiian culture, but also to give you an entertainment value as well,” Kia said.
Jerry Gibson, president of Hawaii Hotel Alliance, knows that may visitors enjoy taking tours of Honolulu landmarks.
“You see trolleys driving everywhere,” he told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser during a phone interview. “They always seem pretty busy so obviously people are using them and enjoy them”
Gibson, who hadn’t taken an XploreRide tour, said that he would prefer a tour without the virtual component, though he called himself “intrigued” by the new technology.
“I would really be interested in seeing the natural scenery, not something that is fantasy,” he said. “One of the reasons that I live here is the natural beauty of the island, so I don’t know that I would want it distorted.”
But Gibson said that he liked the sound of a tour that teaches Hawaiian history.
“I like the factual piece and perhaps being brought through by a narrator,” he said. “I’d be really interested in the cultural pieces and I would be interested in hearing about different places in Hawaii as you drive by.”
Kia said that the project has room to evolve.
“There’s so much more that can be done it’s just a matter of getting it off of the ground. Everything we threw at HIS (Hawaii), that was all on the table, maybe only a third got onto the scenes. We still have a lot of things we can add.”
Range of Applications
The range of XR, which includes VR, in the global visitor industry spans everything from marketing and pre-travel engagement to experiences like XploreRide Hawaii, which allow visitors to explore destinations through technology.
The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority introduced a virtual reality tour experience in 2016 offering 360- degree, live-action footage of the state.
Leslie Dance, former HTA vice president of marketing and product development, touted the VR experience in 2016 and said it was “a new platform for showcasing Hawaii’s culture and natural environment, the two pillars of our global appeal.”
HTA’s VR Hawaii experience, called “Let Hawaii Happen,” still is available on various public VR platforms for download, like STEAM (store.steampowered.com).
Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics, remembers when VR had a surge in popularity around 2012, after the release of the Oculus Rift — a now-discontinued line of virtual reality headsets — and says it could become popular again.
“For about five minutes VR was everybody’s thing and now it’s AI, but it’ll come back,” he said. “Tourism in the metaverse has fewer environmental, social, and cultural negative externalities then tourism in the real world.”
Although he had not been on an XploreRide tour, Brewbaker said “there’s a marketing opportunity for virtual reality bus tours,” as a way to explore the island.
Brewbaker said that he could see a VR Hawaii experience, like HTA’s “Let Hawaii Happen,” become a popular experience for people interested in visiting Hawaii without actually getting on a plane.
“In the next 30 years there’s a potential to have an explosion of possibility here, capitalizing on Hawaii’s destination branding which is already secured,” he said. “There’s never been a time in my life where I haven’t seen the possibilities that technology could bring to doing everything better, faster, safer, cheaper, healthier.”
Responsible tourism
Brewbaker opined that “the dark side of tourism” comes in three broad forms, “congestion, natural resource and environmental degradation and cultural inauthenticity,” and said that extended reality technology could provide an opportunity to manage the harmful impacts of tourism.
Yuki Toshida, manager of HIS Westbound and XploreRide, said the company signed a memorandum of understanding with Hawaii Tourism Japan in September 2022 to support Malama Hawaii, an initiative that promotes regenerative and responsible tourism, and that “XploreRide tours take place on a 100% electric, zero-emission bus.
Sen. Sharon Y. Moriwaki (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana-Kakaako),who took the first XploreRide tour during Tuesday’s grand opening event, said, “I think it’s great for visitors because not only can you see big whales and things you might not actually see if you came here to visit, but it was also very educational and tells you about how we’re trying to protect our environment.”
James Kunane Tokioka, director of Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, said that he appreciates the effort to promote more sustainable tourism through the use of VR.
“Any time you have companies that are trying to be sustainable in their model and try to do things differently than we have in the past, I think that’s great,” Tokioka said. “That’s something we would definitely support.”
Tokioka hadn’t taken the tour yet but said that XploreRide looked like a good activity for parents with kids who might also want to learn about Hawaii.
“This particular tour looked like a lot of fun,” he said. “I think it’s going to attract the younger generation.”
Noah Marian, a 13 year-old member of the content creator family “Life with five kids,” told the Star-Advertiser that he has a personal VR headset on Maui, so he knew what to expect at the XploreRide grand opening.
“I have a VR headset, it’s a little different because I play skydiving games and things like that,” he said. “I feel like this one was cool because I could see outside, and I could see all of the fish around me.”
His brother, 11-year-old Mikah Marian said that he would recommend it to other kids.
“If you want to come here and learn about the culture of Hawaii and do it in a fun way for kids, it would be really good,” he said.