Virtual Reality Travel, much like physical travel, offers many mental and physical benefits. Whether you’re seeking an affordable method to explore the world, a means to broaden your children’s perspectives or a unique and novel experience for your grandparents, virtual reality travel can fulfill these desires.
Who hasn’t dreamed of packing a bag, grabbing a passport, and seeing the world? Especially on those days when life has been tough! In the past, you’d have to be rich, in great health, and free to take off whenever you want to make that dream come true.
Not anymore.
Welcome to Virtual Reality Travel!
Travel Enhances Both Physical and Mental Wellness
Taking a break from the pressure and stress of a forty-plus-hour workweek allows our bodies and brains to reset. It’s been proven that taking time off to relax and build new memories with family and friends reduces job burnout and increases productivity.
Despite this, businesses in the US offer the least paid vacation time of any wealthy nation, and 23% of American workers don’t get any paid time off at all.
Travel can reduce stress, and that’s just one of the benefits of taking vacation time to travel.
Travel Increases Productivity
We all know how it feels to get into a rut at work. Responsiblities that were exciting and new are now boring and repetitive.
It becomes a cycle. The less engaged you are with your job, the less likely you are to develop imaginative and innovative solutions to the problems and challenges that arise. And the more problems and challenges arise that you can’t resolve, the more you feel that you are in a rut.
Getting away and doing something new helps to wake up your brain by asking it to process new information, and this jolt to the brain carries on long after you get back to your job.
Travel is Good for Heart Health
We live in a world that pushes us to go faster and faster. Between the stresses of work, the worries about money, and the security of our family, many of us live in a state of perpetual cortisol overload.
Cortisol is the hormone our body produces when feeling anxious or worried. Over long periods of time, this hormone can make our heart work harder than it needs to, putting us at risk for heart-related diseases.
Slowing down and taking the time to travel can break that stress cycle, which drops cortisol levels in our bloodstream. Lower cortisol levels also mean lower blood pressure and can reduce the amount of cholesterol and plaque building up in our arteries.
Travel Boosts Happiness
When we break the monotony of everyday life and experience something out of the ordinary, our brains stay active and engaged.
New sights and sounds stimulate our curiosity and encourage us to see things differently. This causes our bodies to release oxytocin, the happy hormone that increases our pleasure and well-being.
Travel Increases Creativity
Have you ever struggled with a challenge, and you couldn’t find the solution? However, once you turned your attention to something else or had a good night’s sleep, you had the answer readily come to mind.
The same works when you are traveling. The issues of your normal life are on the back burner while you focus on the fun and excitement of visiting new locations. Having fun and focusing on something else allows the brain to work on the problem without all that pressure.
The sensory input from the places you visit and the events you experience indirectly helps your brain come up with creative solutions.
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” —Walt Disney
Travel Opens the Door to Greater Understanding
I recently came across a travel video of a country I knew nothing about—a country often mentioned in the news in connection with violence and war. If you’d asked me to describe this place, I’d have used words like desolate and war-torn, the stuff of nightmares.
As I watched this video, I was stunned at the beautiful and varied landscape. There was peaceful countryside and dramatic cliffs with sandy beaches pressed against the sea. It was embarrassing to find out how ignorant I had been.
So many beautiful and amazing parts of our planet are just waiting to be discovered. Appreciating them, whether through real or virtual travel, gives me a clearer understanding of the variety and beauty that is a characteristic of our planet.
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Experiencing These Benefits in Virtual Reality Travel
Clearly, there are differences between virtual and real travel, but both provide similar health and mental benefits. Moreover, these benefits are available to everyone, regardless of age.
Senior Citizens
Virtual Travel is a growing trend among senior citizens. This age group makes up 6% of all virtual reality users.
The novelty of experiencing virtual travel is fun. But, research has shown that it also increases cognitive health and a sense of well-being.
Virtual travel can be done at home in a comfortable chair. Using a virtual reality headset, seniors can explore the world without the stress or even fear that can be associated with traveling as an older adult. More and more adult children are giving their parents the gift of travel by introducing them to a virtual reality headset like the Meta Quest 2 or the Meta Quest 3.
These headsets are easy to use and can open the door to various virtual experiences.
Kids and Teenagers
Over the last decade, our country has seen a decline in our kids’ geography knowledge. This is partly because many states no longer require teaching world geography, emphasizing more basic skills like reading, science, and math.
Without a good understanding of our planet’s diversity, it’s difficult to understand the many cultures and people that inhabit it.
Virtual travel helps young people experience life outside of their hometown. To see the beauty and variety that exists throughout our world.
Ideally, you could show your children the world by traveling together to faraway lands, taking them on tours through famous museums, and introducing them to how people from other countries live.
You can also do all of those things using virtual tours with a VR headset.
Most American's Have Little Vacation Time to Enjoy
In an Expedia poll in 2023, 65% of US respondents felt vacation deprived, the highest rate in the last ten years. In 2022, the average number of vacation days American workers took was 8.5. One-quarter of Americans report not taking one vacation day all year. If you can’t get away for a real full-time vacation, you can still take short virtual vacations whenever you like.
The change of scenery, whether through real or virtual travel, stimulates parts of your brain that trigger creative thought. Exposure to novel sights and sounds creates new neural pathways in the brain, and these new pathways can bring a fresh perspective to your day-to-day challenges.
Where can I find resources for virtual travel?
Today’s technology provides thousands of different ways to see the world without leaving our homes. From Webcams that stream various interesting sites to the use of indoor and outdoor Google Earth-type apps, it isn’t hard to explore any place you can think of by searching the internet.
One of the newest and most exciting options for virtual travel is 180- and 360-degree videos. These videos provide an immersive travel experience, especially when viewed using a virtual reality headset.
Here’s an article with lots of ideas to help you get started:
If you’ve found any great virtual tours, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.
